Colorless Days

In the lineup of old lovers,
he never appears,
yet he was the one who peeled back my skin,
slipped fingers beneath breastbone,
took heart into hand.
Odd, this disappearance, when a decade
of heartbeats had to thump past
before flesh closed and healed.
I wonder if his next love remembers.
Perhaps the one after that still carries his photo,
touches it surreptitiously when paying a bill.
Maybe those men who once slung our hearts
'round their necks, painted hieroglyphs
on our breasts with their tongues,
wake now in colorless rooms,
bewildered to find no woman beneath them.
Perhaps they remember a certain face,
a laugh...a sigh,
& dream of those days when their touch
still forged fingerprints into the hollows of our time.