Robert Halleck

Ete perdu

An occasional Facebook friend messaged me
to say you were dead. Time went back into itself.
Into the past of strawberry kisses and Jean Nate
scented sheets, your pale blue bedroom, and
the sound of sparrows through slatted blinds
on an early summer afternoon. We lay
knowing we had left young safety and departed
to an unknown place. I had said here is the time
to live so why not now. Why not in a house
empty of parental watch. Our nakedness burned
your mirrors. All summer we searched and
found other places for kisses, sex, and promises
until your mother’s headache at afternoon bridge.
We could not run fast enough to escape the storm.

Robert Halleck lives and writes poetry in Del Mar, California. Two of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poems have recently appeared or will appear in Waxing and Waning, The North Dakota Quarterly, Third Wednesday, Ninth Letter, and Rumenl.