when you said that a wedding sounded
like something you could live with
so long as it was small
and local and not actually a ceremony
at all but a gathering
of some people we love but not
too many and not requiring
too much planning
I should have left you. should
have swallowed the velvet cushions
you leaned against, the ones salvaged
from the first couch my folks ever owned,
should have shredded the silk blanket
into rags, cracked my teeth
on the wood bed-frame, anything
but stay. love, you are the best
of my failures. how educated I've become
in the ways of silence. the woman
who follows me from room
to room in this new house has so
many hands there are not enough days
to fill them. when you did not
say no to the possibility
of a child I should never
have taken that for yes.
should have gathered
my ovaries like a fistful
of amaranth and run
all the way to Chicago.
who did I think we were.
who did I think
I could make you.
this is the oldest mistake,
to confuse wanting
with magic. silence is the undoing
of every spell, and we are experts
in the unsaid. even now, I forget
to put us in past tense. as if
the air in this city were the same.
as if love is anything like its speaking.