For you, the one I hardly knew…

I once heard about a Chinese ritual, of burning that which you

want the dead you loved to take with them:

I want to set fire to every scrap of paper; every scrawled poem

I gave you & you gave me.

I don’t believe they will ever reach you,

only that

ritual contains more meaning than truth

can retain.

Yet still I don’t dare

let the words we shared disappear.