Not Gone

by Lynne Zotalis

You ruined me, but what pleasure

                                the spoiling, the ruination

                     utter abandon

   the level of intimacy

                    anticipating,

                         relishing the refined touch,

                            the whispered brush of your lips

                                                             tongue tasting stroke.

               Nine years later the aesthete remains, a knowing

              shadow

             ephemeral

        no longer hurting or wounding

                       No

                     Now I bask with a sense of

                 fingers resting tenderly at home

                           upon my neck

                  a slight squeeze now and again

                 inferring in your singularly, quiet way

                      all of the words you didn’t voice.


* * * * *

Lynne Zotalis’s short stories have won publication for three years in the R.H. Cunningham Short Story Contest through Willowdown Books. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine, writinginawoman’svoice, The Poetic Bond VII, VIII and IX, and Lyrical Iowa. Her grief recovery book, Saying Goodbye to Chuck, promotes an interactive method of incorporating a daily journal to enunciate the readers’ personal grief process, available on Amazon. Her latest book, Hippie at Heart (What I Used to Be, I Still Am) and the rest of her publications are listed on the Amazon author page. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DC6GZ7T