Trinket Words She Hung Around My Neck

Trinket words she hung around my neck
glassy globes reflecting all the things
I wished she was but wasn't

Artisan apologies for a lifetime of weakness
a mnemonic sleight-of-hand smearing
luster over rusted empathy

She received me as a possession
reducing passion to pornography

Her gifts glittering brightest
before they shattered sphere by sphere
into cutting rains of silvered glass

I left her as she stared smiling down
into her thousand dim reflections

Her face every twinkling star
in a wine-red universe