Return to Sender

The primacy of self in your philosophy is doing that dark work it inevitably does, skewing the world in your eyes away from the way those ripples hit the other fish, and your empathy and your patience are going, at least where I'm concerned. The primacy of your story means overwriting my own narrative of emotion, means seeing my pain in terms of what I ask of you, not what you have asked of me, nor by what we both agreed to by being here in this room, by not retreating into those mythic woods of solitude where whatever one is is right and finished. Here, we are not autonomous. Here we have made ourselves vulnerable and to undermine that is to lie while holding a life in your hands.

This life is precious, yes, so let it be treated with care. How can any pain be trivial in a life that ends? Here's the last shred of my angst and anger, my resentment and resistance, there will be nothing now but love or silence. This can be a document, a charter, a letter of resignation, or an invitation to some kind of future not so heavy with loss.

Or maybe it will get lost in the mail like so many such petitions.

Another thing you make is this light in me

Sometimes
They mean

"Put this bit here"

Sometimes

"Let it fall thus, or thuslike"
But you mean

"What matrix of concepts
Would occur
To a child
In the night"

And that is
The mind
Of making
Which lights me on fire

Keeps my head
In singing static

In moving meanings

Which sets all things -

The body, also -

Alight