Past Caring
It’s like a tense:
Past Simple,
Past Continuous, Past

Caring says I no
longer even think about
whatever it was -
I do not now
regret, I never
felt regret

and wishes to cease saying,
what’s done is gone
but can’t speak in the present
of doing, hoping,

of leaving the table’s smeared cups
ashy saucers
and glancing round from the café-bar door
see the waitress pick up the tip

quickly wipe the table clean,
the looping trailmarks of her cloth like
pink-ribbons following a kite -

the rusty, fiery
iron deposits
polished in the slate.


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