by Katherine Fallon
I kept finding your things: a drop of blood
that took root in the carpet of your bedroom,
your mother's antique trivet, the Beta fish
we got together. He was red, or violent blue,
and lived in a canning jar. He was the seven
swift cuts along your arm when he swam
like a whip toward his food, was the current
at thaw, the sound of ice floes crashing
against the river’s still-frozen banks, the days
we forgot him for each other. I loved him
more with you gone. One night I left him
by the window too long and he grew a suit
of hirsute frost. In places, he glowed through
the dull rime, lustrous as mineral, much like
the way your makeshift tourniquet—
bleached white dishcloth I held with one hand
as we rushed through town in the snow—
had bloomed into showmanship.
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