Poetry Month

After You Were Mine
by Stuart Crowther

I wondered what happened after you were mine.

but no
not mine
not as shrewd as belonging, not as finite as possession –
rather I
borrowed you for awhile,
but
less like the replacement for a faulty appliance,
more like a treasured acquisition – a tome,
housed in a library somewhere I'll never visit but might think of on some idle morning as the kettle boils and
letters drop forlornly to the mat
and I catch myself … sometimes … I'm
thinking - on a rainy weekend or a broken Tuesday
which seems fit for little else –
wondering where you are and who's borrowed you now
who's inhaling the scent of your pages and adding a
sentence or two.
In a cursive script
much neater than mine.
I remember the shape of you, sketch the illustration, but blur the edges,
imagine a technicolour version where there was really
only a limited palette,
as limited as my own at the time,
but we painted each other in primary tones
stuck to the lines,
caring nothing for the shades and scribbles that would follow with time
and with age.
I kept you intact for a while,
painstakingly guarding your covers then
passed you on
a good sport
to someone else, who could decipher your wisdom,
a specialist in text I could not read anymore,
after you were mine,
I wondered.
who you'd lent yourself to

and hoped his hands were clean