Lines to an Ex-Girlfriend



The names carved in the campus beeches
expand each year like our love

-- the cringe-worthy words I wrote back then
seem artificial to me now -- what art and artifice.

And we never carved our names in the trees,
although I implied we did. All those initials:

hearts peeled like beech bark. I remember
the ache even now, wonder if I was just
one more man who shared your bed.

Christopher T. George