Helen Birch-Bartlett

From “A Line-a-day for Certain Lovers”

I NEVER forgot you,

And I loved your silences.

I believed in you, and yet I could not believe.

I was both constant and inconstant.

You were faithless—yet immeasurably true.

A time came

When your memory swung like a bright pendulum

Backwards and forwards in my brain,

Channeling a groove.

Even had I loved you,

I would have chosen the same way.