Fifty words.
It’s all we have.
Alan took himself from us, so young, when she still had hundreds.
Saturday she couldn’t remember that the bedroom—that dusty shrine—was once his.
Yesterday, his name dropped away.
Soon she’ll gaze at me and see a stranger. We’ll be down to forty-nine.
After chasing his muse from Virginia to Manhattan, Richard Day Gore settled in Southern California, where he spends his time pushing around words, paint brushes, and guitar strings.