Best Before

By Luc Diamant

My tin of pink salt from the mountains

expires in under a year.

Its age is some two hundred million;

it only just made it here.

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This bottle of mineral water

was bound for a similar fate.

Five thousand years old and I drank it

on its expiration date.

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I knew when we met that I’d waited

for her since the first drop of snow.

I guess it could never have lasted

for more than a month or so.