the way that he remembers her,
was winter many years ago;
and he and she were shopping, she
was standing in a bath work store;
a bar of scented soap she held,
and closed her eyes to smell it

she left him not long after that,
that winter many years ago;
and sometimes he’d pick up that soap
when he was near that store again –
as though, to breathe the same thing in
that he could
bring her
back