They’re no longer doodles on the inside of a Judy Blume book,

or the symbol before I signed my name on notes

(folded in my best friend’s palm).

 

I swear I left mine on a bus to Heathrow—back in ‘06,

stuck between the blue seats, next to a 50 pence piece.

 

Or maybe I lost it at the corner coffee shop

during my mentor’s poetry reading.

Did she tuck it into her purse

with her pack of cigarettes,

next to a tube of aubergine lipstick?

 

But there are days I think I etched it into our desk

in chemistry, after my morning ritual

of tracing your graphite words with my fingertip.

---

Marisa Silva-Dunbar’s work has been published in Better than Starbucks Magazine, Redheaded Stepchild, Words Dance Magazine and Gargoyle Magazine. She graduated from the University of East Anglia with her MA in poetry, and has been shortlisted twice for the Eyewear Publishing Fortnight Poetry Prize.

She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.