I. unfold

We loved (oh god.) like a diagram-
    both withholding and instructional.       

There were three lives there.
The first and second were slipping-
     the third wasn’t really a life at all.
Lanky, they hinged upon the other and
      were triumphantly linked
    in their ruin.

It was an attempt
     at re-working fate, at recovering
   a forgotten meant-to-be thing. We set
the spin of our days
to the different tick
of your pocket watch.

A fault in you
      noticed the same
         face in me;
and in dark places
     we chose the other as delicate and
                                savage company.

We became like thin sheets of
   tar
    over our silly, self-loathing
    bodies, over our fine lives of which
        we crowned ourselves
benea
          th.

       ( I became you. )

You were my most impulsive decision;
           you were my most.



III. throughout



            



              (we used to be

           the envy of
     heaven,
  the trophy wife
                    of words.

      I basked
                in the long
    O of your name.

We could not have
                     been human in those months.

Especially you-
      being
     a tangle of catches and
        antiheroic good looks.

I did not know that kind of armor
was just for show.

And I am left hushed,
cursing          
  clumsy me.)








II. other languages

And how many riots did we start?
(I burned
my shamed face in effigy
as an apology.)

And how like me to cyclone all about?
     And how like you
      to not due without.

       Up next to my shocking
                   bouts of voltage,
your mouth pregnant
   with a lie and countless
     so-sorries
             was silent and still.

We were scientists.
    We took it apart
      to see our biology and build,
          to really note the mechanics, you’ve said.

       Or we wrote ourselves that way-
unable to lie (on paper),
           we would not move from
under that favorite weight.

        I do not know if the tether wore, if
          perhaps we chewed through it
                     when we were hungry.

             I used to toy with using black magic
     to undo you-
   a witch doctor and things I
  do not believe in.

I am at a loss
        when my one belief broke in my hands.