You have placed signs of me everywhere. The stones I gave you on the shelf, in the shadow of the old photograph, the banded half-moon piece of agate, on a ribbon, between your breasts.

My room at dawn with its scattering of books and crumpled sheets, on the contrary, is as unadorned as it was at the beginning. Even the bouquet of grass that I placed for you in an empty pickle bottle has gone to rust. Yet, this this calf light at the window, which rubbed against me to awaken me, is the rose of your mouth.