"Dear"
It's hard, though, to give up
belonging (to). And wasn't our attraction
real? Although we were 'bound'—father and daughter—
although, or because, or it's facile to say so...
'stock' apparent. The familiar's
gone now; the eyes must determine, determine, always
looking (for)...
(5/09)
As though my shadow were taking a shape—that I should guess at
that shape and become it?—inchoate, animate, a Golem my back's always
turned to: his decline, proceeding...
(5/10)
I said: No, no. No. And made every gesture—the head, a hand off the
wheel—no, the whole drive home (alone). The little
vocabulary! (as when I learned him—early), the repetition (as in learning
to identify—that, from the first). I said: No, no...not in me;
and the it is fear, I begin to breathe heavily. I think he is wanting me.
(5/11)
There isn't time to think about this. Every time I sit still,
the ginger eyes of the ginger stray—face all scratched, the queerly outsized head, he came to the
back door—somehow
familiar: what was wanted from me? (I feared I would be 'adopted') his cry
importunate; and what I wanted—I:—detachment; only an episode, how to extricate myself...
*
What memories? Affection when I was admiring him.
When I was admired: he could be proud of me. And he brought me presents.
So say that he loved me. Or loved my behavior. Certain behaviors.
*
I was feeling a little better, and now, not.
A raccoon trashed the lily: the strew of pink petals on the pond.
A broken branch in the Chinese poem in World Lit. in high school which meant her virginity
was lost, which was lost on me.
Now the mood, the day, the blossom, my illusions; and paper picks up the debris as in training
a dog.
Or a skimming of things off the top—like the petals, like fat (I keep typing 'fate') or like mold...
Why so upset? Things are still 'related.' Ah—
(5/12)
We can talk a little, okay? But only a little—a skimming
a surface. Under a bridge but over the reflection of the bridge
in that painting you so admired—one of the pair, Dutch (you owned), (So much
in our shared look: wit, elation, intimacy—that you recognized me?; I resembled...)
How you liked the Impressionists, too—their reflection, refraction,
more difficult—(not to say 'loved'). (I thought to belong in that look
forever...) Though your Boudin turned out to be forged—a poor investment—
not even a copy,
since the original of that painting never existed...
(5/13)
I was reading, interested. Quiet.
The sun on the back of my head, my neck: a caress. I was acceptable here.
The line of my neck as though drawn, I was still, calm, where the light fell.
Accepted.
The warmth on my neck where the light fell, behind me, the line of my neck
after his, which he gave me, accepted, a caress.
(5/14)
Then the next I imagine myself drawing up out of these limbs
I inhabit as though something if not the marrow—the intent—were not his...
(5/15)
—Carol Snow
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