[return to Contents Page]

Sharon Trevelyan Dean

Here Be Dragons

I remember him standing outside my parents' house, handing me a thin scrap of notebook paper. The poem was called Sorry and I could tell that he was but I shut the kitchen door and watched him walk away. I slipped the poem between the pages of a book about dragons. For twenty years I imagined their fiery breath and glinting talons protecting his tender words from my unforgiving heart. Opening the poem I notice dark scorch-like stains, threadlike splits in the creases of the page.

a wisp of smoke
from the cave's mouth
autumn chill