To a friend who left

It was thrifty of you,

To have given in abundance and given unflinchingly

And then to have taken back as though I 

Somehow failed to meet your touchstone

I had inked your address with a careless shrug,

Knowing I would not need it for I knew each way to you

Now even when those obsolete lines show themselves to me,

It is lost on me as to where you live.

The crooked smile that had braved the caprice of time

Was tinged but with a lingering droop the last time

I mustered a smile too, but a hapless one

For you left the instant it curved onto my lips.

I see facsimiles of you in faces of random nondescripts,

I see your frivolities in schoolgirls with unkempt pigtails 

I reproach you, not because you left

But because you were thrifty in leaving behind the trails

That would have otherwise led me to you.