Gone
You thought me carnal didn’t
you? You dreamt you could reach through
my ancient chasm and touch me and find
warm skin, a bit of resistance
to tell you I was there not a hallucination.
Oh, how wrong we can be but you didn’t
know. How could you? I concealed the evidence.
How could I tell you otherwise without giving myself
away, away to you away to me?
I used to think quatrains could limn my
boundaries with an a b a b rhyme scheme
to make you and others comfortable with my
gauzy absence, but poetry ultimately fails
I am no longer me and haven’t been for decades
no not me any more than you or the children
we once had in your womb yes in your womb those
impostors attached themselves only to die out
hollow us out.
With each assault, I rallied a bit didn’t I
yes, rallied and screwed my hatred deep
Into the magnetic maw oh yes, I shook my weakened
fist against the odds stacked against me
against you.
Diagnosis one atop the next each chronic each
enduring beyond me beyond you each
taking its measure from our dimming horizon
yet wounded grievously I’m here still here?
No, my love, I’m not here no not here I have
shrunk I am a quivering filament dancing
to an elegiac song not heard by you but by
me yes me I hear it thrumming faintly so faintly...
We told ourselves decades ago that we’d be ever
together no matter what storms blew in from
my inflamed coast to flatten dreams in skeins of leaking
oil from my fractured crankcase stripped and bleeding
Maybe you’ve caught on of late it’s hard to tell
but I keep going on not going on for you for me
I have receded yes receded from the corporeal you
know shrunk from my surface my boundaries
I am now boundless shrieking my last despair into
Infinity the Infinity I swore I’d never court but now you
know I lied first to me then to you I lied lied I lied
oh god I lied
please don’t reach for me there is no
way back
I’m gone