One day you find your first true love
in an online obituary
and you realize she hasn’t been gone
these past forty years.
She has been beneath your skin,
under the tattoos, scars and scabs
that you thought were forgetting.
She dwelt, like a cicada,
under your feet and beneath
your delible heart, waiting
for an anniversary to split
the wounds anew.
Now you are rewound,
back four decades, beneath
a cold Kentucky moon.
Everything has changed,
after all these years.
Nothing has changed.
Robert L. Penick
Louisville