You want to know who I am?
I am the girl with one sock down,
the other up.
The shy girl you hardly see in the corner.
The sigh that parses the barrier of your lips.
I am the tongue-tied aphasic who stands close, yet still
afraid to move, just waiting, hoping you'll...
I am the steady silence. I am the ellipsis....
The dot dot dot. I am the hungry ghost: who am I to
rattle her chains, the sound of which you fill with domesticity -
I remain the one with whom you once you spoke a shared dialect, an ellipsis
at the end of every sentence and in that ellipsis a blank space
a meaning and only we knew what it meant.
You wrote, “I missed you.” I missed you too. Shit, that was inconvinient.
Yet still. In this I saw no sin, only sweetness.
These days, you just miss. There is no ellipsis, only this.
Why I have ceased to exist!
What a gas...
Some unexplained change: you leave me an orphan,
your saucer-eyed widow, lost in a sea of black-serifed letters
only the words not quite the same.
So no sous-silence.
Perhaps after all this there is no sans issue.
You should know that every single thing you gave:
a note, a card, a book a film, a jar of honey, a paper
with the inky slant of your pen and which bears my name -
I never discarded even one. Each is bound, tucked away with a photo
of your hand, between the thin, gold-tipped pages
of my rare Tennyson; top-shelf, precious,
and the honey-jar, now empty, is full with polished green-marbles.
No, you never said any of it had meaning.
It was me that did that: she of faith: I read your letters and in them I believed.
My misguided self - I showed to you the shy, the real me,
let slip the dark veneer, the black shades and I was there before you,
trusting all you that you said. Such was my great ontological leap -
pure philosophical faith.
I jumped – i did not skip, no petit-saut..
Perhaps you see Jezebel and threat. Funny that.
When all I wanted was this… perhaps....christ, even....
I trusted you this much. We already had our secrets.
Unspoken, ours for the keeping. I belived. You believed.
I had faith in you every faith, thought you the same of me.
So this explains my token gifts, you should know:
The small bound book, the hand-wrought chair,
wrapped and hand-tied with my hair-ribbon, a small piece of me –
I offered myself up and you took it. And after, just a day, mere 48 hours,
you told me This meant nothing when just a few months prior
we had agreed, you had said, over a long-distance wire:
Yes, we were more than just ‘ordinary friends.’
God, such relief this.
Now, you have taken away the sweetness.
You occupy the Now – I don’t know how.
For all I thought I knew, I now know nothing.
For 8 words defined, for letters read, saved, yours written:
You once wrote “I thought I knew… did I understand about the hands….
I thought I did… but then I…. did i?”
I wrote back: "Absolutely: Resolutely:"
I say the same to you now.
You see what you want: a red-lipped whore.
I am no longer your shy, gamine girl of yesterday -
No frightened, backward lover I -
All I ever wanted what was what you -
what I - could never quite say, speak or spell -
instead it lay within the language of a kiss.
I knew this.
Imagined you did.
I revisited my virtue. Agonized; analyzed.
Knees red-raw, I prayed to some god I was not certain I believed in.
All I wanted...a thing for the self. I am not greedy.
All then, you and likewise, to give.
Maybe not what you thought.
It was a symbol: a thing wrapped, tied neatly
and with my hair ribbon, given over wordlessly, shyly.
And only when alone; forever unspoken. always understood.
Held safe; the way I keep the everything
you give, a hushed secret, untold, wrapped tight, furled –
All I found was an affirmation of all that I believed:
An affirmation of all you tell me that now never was.
I am the girl with one sock down,
the other up.
The shy girl you hardly see in the corner.
The sigh that parses the barrier of your lips.
I am the tongue-tied aphasic who stands close, yet still
afraid to move, just waiting, hoping you'll...
I am the steady silence. I am the ellipsis....
The dot dot dot. I am the hungry ghost: who am I to
rattle her chains, the sound of which you fill with domesticity -
I remain the one with whom you once you spoke a shared dialect, an ellipsis
at the end of every sentence and in that ellipsis a blank space
a meaning and only we knew what it meant.
You wrote, “I missed you.” I missed you too. Shit, that was inconvinient.
Yet still. In this I saw no sin, only sweetness.
These days, you just miss. There is no ellipsis, only this.
Why I have ceased to exist!
What a gas...
Some unexplained change: you leave me an orphan,
your saucer-eyed widow, lost in a sea of black-serifed letters
only the words not quite the same.
So no sous-silence.
Perhaps after all this there is no sans issue.
You should know that every single thing you gave:
a note, a card, a book a film, a jar of honey, a paper
with the inky slant of your pen and which bears my name -
I never discarded even one. Each is bound, tucked away with a photo
of your hand, between the thin, gold-tipped pages
of my rare Tennyson; top-shelf, precious,
and the honey-jar, now empty, is full with polished green-marbles.
No, you never said any of it had meaning.
It was me that did that: she of faith: I read your letters and in them I believed.
My misguided self - I showed to you the shy, the real me,
let slip the dark veneer, the black shades and I was there before you,
trusting all you that you said. Such was my great ontological leap -
pure philosophical faith.
I jumped – i did not skip, no petit-saut..
Perhaps you see Jezebel and threat. Funny that.
When all I wanted was this… perhaps....christ, even....
I trusted you this much. We already had our secrets.
Unspoken, ours for the keeping. I belived. You believed.
I had faith in you every faith, thought you the same of me.
So this explains my token gifts, you should know:
The small bound book, the hand-wrought chair,
wrapped and hand-tied with my hair-ribbon, a small piece of me –
I offered myself up and you took it. And after, just a day, mere 48 hours,
you told me This meant nothing when just a few months prior
we had agreed, you had said, over a long-distance wire:
Yes, we were more than just ‘ordinary friends.’
God, such relief this.
Now, you have taken away the sweetness.
You occupy the Now – I don’t know how.
For all I thought I knew, I now know nothing.
For 8 words defined, for letters read, saved, yours written:
You once wrote “I thought I knew… did I understand about the hands….
I thought I did… but then I…. did i?”
I wrote back: "Absolutely: Resolutely:"
I say the same to you now.
You see what you want: a red-lipped whore.
I am no longer your shy, gamine girl of yesterday -
No frightened, backward lover I -
All I ever wanted what was what you -
what I - could never quite say, speak or spell -
instead it lay within the language of a kiss.
I knew this.
Imagined you did.
I revisited my virtue. Agonized; analyzed.
Knees red-raw, I prayed to some god I was not certain I believed in.
All I wanted...a thing for the self. I am not greedy.
All then, you and likewise, to give.
Maybe not what you thought.
It was a symbol: a thing wrapped, tied neatly
and with my hair ribbon, given over wordlessly, shyly.
And only when alone; forever unspoken. always understood.
Held safe; the way I keep the everything
you give, a hushed secret, untold, wrapped tight, furled –
All I found was an affirmation of all that I believed:
An affirmation of all you tell me that now never was.
