My lover lost her marriage ring.
I lost my marriage ring.
This poem is to make it better.
Hers was a topaz clearer than smoke
and of its own shape, which I found
on a road when I was fifteen,
I hid it away til1 it came time
at twenty-nine.
Mine was a sketch of secret figures
making silver love, which she made
with her hands as a child to give me,
all first-try proud and ashamed
at twenty-eight.
We lost them one right after the other
after a year or so:
mine to the fingers of the bamboo
working to build a nursery dome
for our summer son, hers
from her purse to an unknown road
when she chose again to believe
that love is for sharing.
My lover lost her marriage ring.
Her lover lost his marriage ring.
This poem is to make it better.