When he calls me,
my living room will shatter
around me. The mirrors are
fractured with waiting already.
My life will follow
his words.
My walls speak:
you are living your story.
I do not dare ask for ours,
knowing now
he loves me
he says he loves me and I believe him
and he tells me mythologies sometimes
in kind tones, vexed upon the telephone.
is it easier to break words
over wires, where you do not
have to see my heart break
alongside them (when I am
trying to be silent, when I airbrush
agony and aim for the love
we reference so fluidly, when
you ascribe misunderstanding
to verbal memory and I say
nothing, when Southern tempests
occupy the green of my iris, when
my look shifts to brown, to blue,
when rain spills from my eyes
to fall upon your shoulder, to drop
into your lap, and when despite this
I remind myself)
I have never known such happiness,
that I have with your touch forgotten
each of my scars, each of my losses,
and when, darling, we find
we are living out a story
not yet ending and still
I am afraid of the vocabulary
your voice is discovering.
I am equating pain and narration,
shedding my sense of omniscience,
limited as it may be — and you are
telling me theme after theme, you
plant signs firmly between the lines
of dialogue we read, and so I
am living my own story I am holding
out hope for that holy joy you give me
I am responding in kind I am building my story
I am skimming your chapters
over a naked
painted shoulder
and you are telling me a story
I did not quite remember writing,
one I remember as the height
of this heart’s life, and you tell
me our symmetry has birthed
ideas like mirrors, reading edits
I do not remember —
we are living
our own story
and we are selling our dreams short,
meant for more than thoughtless verses
and you sometimes speak
to me as we slip
from bed into soliloquy
and you chisel
complexity from the roles
you assigned to me,
calling shots I never saw
coming — yet you will still
slam back in contest with chanting
strangers briefly met —
and what I am not
writing is your intention
we are living out a story
belied by stray gestures
and lazy diction
I am living out a story
to live out your story
and in the new edition
I am no longer worth
a mention.
2019