Detective

How lonely must you have been, first owner
of this second-hand detective, a “Maigret”,
written in French by Georges Simenon,
the pages almost brown of age,
not turned nor touched for forty years or on.

You left some items in the book, as marks:
a serrated photo, black and white,
shows a young man smoking a pipe in rain,
on the flip side it just says: “c’est moi”,
and a note, hastily written, with a stain.

It is not much to reconstruct your past,
the handwriting is girlish, round and broad,
she must have led you on, but when and how,
who knows. You never sent the photo, right?
The note just said: “I can not make it now.”