This time, this woman got access
to my private email account.
It was my fault;
I wrote to her from it
sending her something she’d asked about
and then she wrote me back.

This was my private place
that I used for private things
like poetry
and she had inadvertently invaded
that sacrosanct space.

I didn’t know what to do.

I ended up doing nothing.

Because she had communicated with me
in a place where no communication would be permitted
I simply did not communicate back.
When she wrote me
asking how I was
I wrote nothing.

When she invited me to a salon
I didn’t respond.
When she suggested we collaborate
on something or other
I deleted the message,
it appears.

I just shut everything down.

Finally, she wrote
“What could have been something
ended before it had any chance.
What was lost? We’ll never know.”

That was the last I heard from her
which was something of a relief.

I was just looking for the quote
within the correspondence
to verify it for accuracy
but somehow
it seems to have disappeared.