How much of my exile
Was their cold injustice
Or my shattered trust
Thrust into a peripheral recognition
Of my own layered grief
And the growth of a hidden relief
Born inside

The stupidest thing I could possibly feel.

Was I sabotaging
A thing insane to allow?
Could I not pull the root
So I burned it all to the ground?
I don’t know
That sounds like me.
And he is gravity

But insanity to indulge in the delusion.

Did I absorb the violence
In the inner rooms,
And pulse it outwards
To destroy the bloom mythical
Planted on my husband’s grave
A foolishness not fitting for
An old widow’s station

Has the enduring struggle
Only been my conscience in excavation?

I can’t know.
Was I forcing away the Masterpiece
I could never hold close
For the horror of having
A flood I can’t control:
A ludicrous thing…
I can’t know.

I was just starting to recognize
The dispassionate benevolence
Did I torch the evidence as tinder
With sore, tender remorse
Because I won’t be a charity
I won’t take half-measures:
My own pride

In murderous intent.

In my gut, I believe
I felt what could never be,
And I wanted it more than
I’ve ever wanted anything
Could I have smothered
Every good thing
To cover the shame

The aching embarrassment?

I can’t know.

It doesn’t excuse
The narcissist,
The Brute, or King Lear
But I fear I abused
Good People
As much as I was abused.
Am I such a fool?

Trying to kill the root underground
Under the forest fire

Before it grows
Before it breaks through the soil
Before everyone knows
Including myself
The humiliation that
I could ever presume
Such an inequality.

That kind of passion isn’t like me.

Was Canton only beautiful
Because he is?

Was it only a horror
Because I am?

I can’t know,
And if so,
What a putrid mess I made.
I must excuse myself
Quietly from the table
And flee
Under cover of night

From the complexity of the mess.

Flee until the dismay
Can’t keep pace.
Flee until the impulse
To lay my face on his chest
Or touch his hands
Somehow stops being part of me

Hide in anonymity
In all the threats
Wherein I’m native-born
To avoid the mortification
Of my indignity
To flee
To flee

That sounds like me
But I can’t know.

I can’t know,
But either way,
I should go.

I should go,
Because I can’t know him,
But his little grin
Is a gentle sunrise
Over a pink meadow.
His lighthouse eyes
Are two strong arms clutching
Pulling you from a raging ocean
His silence
Is a fire crackling on a hearth
In strength that need never
Bare the arm
Or strike the clay.

I have to get away.
I can’t know him
but I know what I am
and what I can never be.

This has been a spectacular defeat.