Return to Sender – A Poem by Steven Fortune

Languid shivers
and cold-sweat shakes;
alimony payments
allotted for September’s
sepia caprice.
Summer’s sleek
inflammatory charm
gives and takes away
in response to the annual
paroxysm of clinical
calendrical insensitivity.
An infamous raincoat –
backhanded wringer
of its wearer’s mood –
now reclines in threaded
retrograde on empty chair.
Scar tissue of the sternest stuff.
Textural.
Expendable.
The flavor of its purpose
filed down to the arcane crust
of a role’s peak
and the swift aftertaste
of its descent.