Love Letters

unthinkable! Keats

          wrote to Fanny Brawne—

spending three days

          with her would fill him

with more delight

          than fifty years

with another—knowing

          butterflies only lived for

three summer days. Most

          of their romance

consisted of watching

          each other walking past

windowpanes—notes

          and wildflowers left

on doorsteps. Nothing

          cute about watching

his brother choke up

          blood—something

John spared Fanny from

          by sailing off to Rome—

leaving her with a ring

          she wore for decades

after. It had gotten old

          by the time she married

Louis Lindo and bore him

          three kids who all moved

to Heidelberg. The ring

          stayed on her finger—stone

of almandine, the gold’s

          scrolled and shouldered

openwork hoop setting

          not worth much

on the auction block

          now a museum piece

after an undertaker

          stripped it off

her finger, her hand

          that wrote the last letters

Keats never opened—

          words that remain

sealed inside a coffin

          with the dust of his bones.