Winner Bernice Kilduff Whte & John J. White Creative Writing Prize for Rose Hill Seniors
Published: April 22, 2010

I will not come and you

who knew I did not love you

will wait and shrink as the day

grows long as its own shadow before dusk.

I did not lie, but lay

beneath you lovinglike, waiting

to leave only to come again with nothing

more than this.

How could you but—

me being what I am

and you what you are, and we

as a door is with a threshold—

believe I would not come always.

I did not lie, and worse,

I will not come.