Deserves
       

She kept onto the photo, to her own surprise
at first. Never set it face down. It's there
as it has always been, on the locker
beside the bed, beneath the lamplight,
and despite everything. The bed
that's become such a big and lonely bed,
without his limbs there tangling up
with hers. He is in it, he is smiling still.
In the picture, not the bed. His smile
is still a smile in a café in Budapest
while the days pass outside the picture
and turn into years. It's her own face
that she's cut out of it. She deserves it,
she knows. To be that empty space
in the photo — and especially in that photo —
is what she deserves to be, she knows,
which is why she has kept it all this time,
and he is smiling, he is happy there,
next to the empty space she has made
of herself, which she hopes she is to him.

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Copyright © 2017 Edward O'Dwyer All rights reserved
from Bad News, Good News, Bad News
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission