Mistaken
MISTAKEN
What I say about you
I say about myself, but don’t believe.
I say you are morning.
Only night rests in my jowls.
I say you are where poetry needs to go,
even though I know it’s already there.
I could taste the ruins in your mouth,
where the men who planted flags on your breasts
discovered the person already living there
and called her “found”.
The brick clay mission they made you build
in your belly is patched and crumbling,
yet your eyes still worship there,
still break wafers over their plates,
staring back into the distant past.
Feed me the cracker of your body
and wonder why I still hunger.
This is why your kisses tasted like
the book I didn’t realize I’d read until it was over,
the song I have remembered all wrong,
danced to all wrong,
filled the bar we talked in with too much smoke and light.
So I say you are a construct.
I say you are not the chicken wings and
sausage and peppers or the pillow of your hair.
You are not the knot in the kerchief of Baldwin’s throat,
not your moans that were mine
or the gravel piling up in your scars.
I have written so many odes to your scars
you have been rubbed smooth with tongue.
These things look back in a mirror at me
every morning you are not here.
The morning you never stayed to savor,
the here that you were never in,
the you that you never were.
What I say about you
I say about myself, but don’t believe.
I say you are morning.
Only night rests in my jowls.
I say you are where poetry needs to go,
even though I know it’s already there.
I could taste the ruins in your mouth,
where the men who planted flags on your breasts
discovered the person already living there
and called her “found”.
The brick clay mission they made you build
in your belly is patched and crumbling,
yet your eyes still worship there,
still break wafers over their plates,
staring back into the distant past.
Feed me the cracker of your body
and wonder why I still hunger.
This is why your kisses tasted like
the book I didn’t realize I’d read until it was over,
the song I have remembered all wrong,
danced to all wrong,
filled the bar we talked in with too much smoke and light.
So I say you are a construct.
I say you are not the chicken wings and
sausage and peppers or the pillow of your hair.
You are not the knot in the kerchief of Baldwin’s throat,
not your moans that were mine
or the gravel piling up in your scars.
I have written so many odes to your scars
you have been rubbed smooth with tongue.
These things look back in a mirror at me
every morning you are not here.
The morning you never stayed to savor,
the here that you were never in,
the you that you never were.
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