An old one

I need to decide what to do with the old poems, like this:

Adventures with ‘Love in the time of cholera’

El amor en los tiempos del colera

Flowers rained from the heavens
on the summer evening I delved between your covers.
A postcard from my soon-to-be lover,
planted in my palm as I read page one -
a love note from your wife’s namesake
to whom you dedicated
your text of love.

Several years later
in the grip of a pandemic
I spread my fever
with another.
A novella-addicted
lover,
transfixed was she.
Alas,
a catalyst was
to become of me.

Moving on,
I plant a copy with
panda eyes.
Adored your words she did,
but dared not read
the last two chapters
lest she lose the connection
that she had shared with me
before I fled.

The night she shares
this long-kept secret,
another enters the ether.
Rosalie, dark-haired vision
of Minas Gerais.
Finding me,
with the swiftness
of internet contagion.

Just what next
will befall me
as fates entwine,
whilst in the cholera grip
of a love that's all mine?

15th March 2004