Ugly Fate

I saw a name –

Not even a face –

Yet stood against

The flood of pain that

Always crashes unexpectedly.

I was young

Why does it linger?

It should rub off,

The thing she said.

But it won’t, it can’t.

That she’d never love me

Seemed so fatalistic and eternal

In its composition. Perhaps no one

Ever could. And she, slender,

Tight-jeaned in her midriff top,

Became my redheaded oracle

On the day, years later when I lost my faith.