Ah Lise,
you must be deeply confused… your words and actions haunt me
like knives that run silent through my stomach.
The other day you said you hated the thought that someone else
might touch me as you do and then you slept with Anthony.
And a few days before that, in pure poetry, you said,
“I just want new words to say how I feel about you.”
and look, just look where we are in a week.
You scattered my pictures all around your place
and showed me, unasked, how you would let Anthony know
you were taken when he came. But my pictures saw otherwise.
You’ve told Anthony that I’ve been leaving so long
that in many ways you’ve said your goodbyes
and that you believed we had no future
but you never told me….
And the other day you said I should write a passionate poem…
about you.
And now, in the settling debris of these last days,
you say you’re ‘in love’ with me and that you are not
‘in love’ with him and, that in fact, you don’t even ‘love’ him.
And yet, look at us here, you packing my bags
and his about to arrive.
There are so many things here that defy logic and reason
but then the heart doesn’t move by logic, does it?
I want to say, ‘What of my love?’, but first, what of yours for me?
You say it has not diminished and agree
that our love was on a steady ascendant…
but all of that year and a half has been swept away
by a stranger’s words.
I am naked from loving, I have no reservation, I have no defense
and I have no understanding
of how you could feel as I do and do this to me….
gallagher
21 Nov 85
— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —