of prompts – and other gimmicks:

 

dear me,

pretentious, pushing phifty;

what once was over the hill, now?

water under the bridge?

 

if i could, i would

love you to death.

because death will part us.

 

and on the burial fern-lilies would sway

to the plonk-plonk of a tinny piano,

chinese-lanterns in the waft of the

muted yet clear laughter of guests,

( she would wear her favourite patent leather boots).

 

like an unwritten elegy on snow,

branded in vodka, singed for weeks,

to none can one say no.

 

for at the end of that long stiletto-pocked night,

the morning would have broken

( like the first morning),

 

dear me!