I keep finding you as a friend of friends,
or in the spuriously precise terms of LinkedIn,
a 3rd degree connection,
having added to your CV various
certifications which weren’t even around
in the days we worked together,
divided by a common tongue,
a so-called platonic attraction:
The ways we fit together broke down under the strain.

Much of this wasn’t true.
My truth is the lemon-scented shampoo smell in the lobby;
the then-stylish bob from which you’ve doubtlessly moved on,
on the head of an older woman in a tennis dress,
the sound of an urban English accent,
the taste for Shiraz I still have,
and tell myself it’s nothing
to do with you.