Every time I look at the three graces
the handmade art piece, the three
women I wanted and you bought me

for our first anniversary, I remember
our life together as if I were dying: our
life flashes before my eyes, not in

transparency, but through glass stained
with the lies I told myself down the
years. I wanted them to be true, never

doubt that. I built them from dreams
because I didn’t have whole cloth. You
were the closest to being my other half,

but I was never the half I thought I was.
I see that now.

——

Sandra de Helen’s work appears in Artemis Journal, Concrete & River, Neurology Now, Sweatpants & Coffee, Five:2:One, ROAR, The Dandelion Review, The Medical Journal of Australia, Mom Egg, Lavender Review: Night Issue, and other journals. A collection of lesbian love poems is forthcoming from Launch Point Press August 2018.