iii.
You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints
You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions
Please die I said
so I can write about it
After all you are quite
ordinary: 2 arms 2 legs
a head, a reasonable
body, toes & fingers, a few
eccentricities, a few honesties
but not too many, too many
postponements & regrets but
you'll adjust to it, meeting
deadlines and other
people, pretending to love
the wrong woman some of the
time, listening to your brain
shrink, your diaries
expanding as you grow older,
growing older, of course you'll
die but not yet, you'll outlive
even my distortions of you
and there isn't anything
I want to do about the fact
that you are unhappy & sick
you aren't sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.
yes at first you
go down smooth as
pills, all of me
breathes you in and then it's
a kick in the head, orange
and brutal, sharp jewels
hit and my
hair splinters
the adjectives
fall away from me, no
threads left holding
me, I flake apart
layer by
layer down
quietly to the bone, my skull
unfolds to an astounded flower
regrowing the body, learning
speech again takes
days and longer
each time/ too much of
this is fatal
Margaret Atwood
No comments:
Post a Comment