Susan Daniels Poetry

so many flourishes in that signature
the heart dotting the i in her name
an internalized affectation
left over from high school
that fit a name made mostly of vowels
those round sounds so perfectly pearled together
& softer than my hissing consonants

I saved them, those letters she wrote
in the back of her notebook;
love letters promising everything,
but written in her voice

I never knew until after she died
she was so hungry for it once
she manufactured love on paper
to fill the hollowed-out center
of her chest

you can’t see that seeking shadowing the corners
of her photographs & I don’t hear it in memory,
but it was there.  it must have been;

longing that powerful should have darkened
the colors of her voice, as it curled,
sweet & thick around her tongue

but it didn’t

no wonder, when she did finally find
that man, she followed the feeling
with a focus that left him reeling in it

& impossibly empty after she left

he told me once, years later
her love still resonated in a vault
deep behind the solar plexus.  an emptiness
he did not know was there
until she filled it

I do not know, and never will
if the force of that feeling
made him write letters too