When the words hit
she gave only the slightest sign of comprehension
before her body fell.
Its full weight upon me in that last embrace
her oh-so-exacting fingers
the fineness of her wrists
her child-like bones
erased all thought of that glowing cigarette
between our beds, when the night was warm
and her unseen eyes were not these eyes.
She turned stone cold around me.
There was never any chance of escape.
Carol Brockfield is a retired book editor and former member of California's Napa Poet's Collective. Now living in Oregon, she chairs the Rogue Valley chapter of the Oregon Poetry Association, which gives monthly poetry workshops and engages in the promotion of poetry everywhere. Her work has also appeared in Women Writers, flashquake, The Hiss Quarterly, Cimarron Review and In the Garden of the Crow anthology.
