Girl Gone Ghost by Nathan Graziano

You took the first flight back to San Diego

bringing all your possessions—your clothes, 

light for California, your hardcover book

on astrology, the silver ring you wore

as a wedding band whenever we went out

so no one would stare, your service dog

with its papers in the pocket of your fur coat.

I swallow that pronoun like antifreeze—yours.

You slipped from me without a decent goodbye,

without apology, with nothing but a quick kiss

at a bus station, a mumbled promise that we’d see

each other again, someday. I didn’t know better.

You booked a flight out of Boston, the first flight

for ghosts then deleted me, the married man

who never whispered into your ear the things

you needed to hear, the syllables to make you stay.

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. His books include Teaching Metaphors (Sunnyoutside Press), After the Honeymoon (Sunnyoutside Press) Hangover Breakfasts (Bottle of Smoke Press in 2012), Some Sort of Ugly (Marginalia Publishing in 2013), and My Next Bad Decision (Artistically Declined Press, 2014). Almost Christmas, a collection of short prose pieces, was recently published by Redneck Press. Graziano writes a baseball column for Dirty Water Media in Boston. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com.