Replaceable
until You’re Not.
1
Throw your love until it
sticks, and know
you’ll only know it stuck
if it ends up sticking. In
case it does
in the end, in the beginning
just say “This is the
one.” Whether or not
that’s true, trick yourself
into it being true, so you’re
someone
who says truths.
The problem might be regret.
It is so beautiful
to cry and remember,
if beauty is a knife
wound. Memory, that disco light,
makes for some unforgettable songs,
until morning. Will I
have you? It’s impossible
to know, or impossible to have a person.
Why do we think we can?
I
can’t yet forget the quiet music you gave me,
the lyrics I imagined in your
voice.
Music’s ruthless that way: “Here are the words
and here is the tune to how
you feel. Doesn’t matter
you didn’t originate your own feelings.
We know you! Enjoy!” I may be
a chump,
but at some point aren’t I irreplaceable?
And if I am, mustn’t I have
always been,
or have I so improved?
2
When does being enough
occur? When will I say
you and no other, you as long
as I can see, as long as I
want, and I want infinitely.
Not indefinitely, which seems arbitrary,
but wanting precisely more,
always,
of the same kind of thing.
When, because next year never
happens, the wedding
plans sketched on scraps of paper
thrown out next
misunderstanding. Fresh pages
replace them.
Fresh scraps.
Eventually the heart I have
to offer
is as hard and small and uni-pupose as a tack.
3
We only make this love work
because we work for it,
like a wage, an art.
We are only each other’s
because
the day is long.
The feeling, the opening wide
the blue glee,
laughing, ravenous together.
And at some point the
question comes up,
of whether we could continue
and the answer is not quite
yes, which isn’t quite no,
but then what is it?
Well, we both deserve
something more than nothing,
neither of which this thing we’re doing ends up
being.
So let’s split, let’s know,
and make ourselves an old song of it:
“If I’m not it then it’s not me or you neither.”
Moving on,
is what they call it. As if one moves,
instead of revises, reneges, replenishes.
When you get new shoes, do
you throw out the old?
Do you buy the same style?
4
Not another one, you think,
impossible.
Not again.
I can’t do it differently, I
can’t do it
the same. I can’t.
You do. Opening. Being
careful.
Being stupid.
Same beast of hope, Beast of
shame,
same terror, same space, different world.
Old world. Scary moment.
Amazement
that breaks you.
You are not broken. You break again
and again because
that’s what breaking means.
To be whole.
5
Maybe when we’re in the same
nursing home.
neighbors again after decades apart,
surprised at our homing
instinct. Or maybe just
next year,
happy with others,
having learned not to chuck the safe before cracking it.
At a friend’s book party,
you’ll notice how I’ve
changed. In line
at the Apple Store, weary in the cab,
startled in the saladmarket,
weepy at the doctor’s,
I’ll never change.
6
I’ll always be the same woman
you loved,
this woman I no longer am,
I’ll be her and re-be her
because I can’t replace myself.
Here is the body you loved,
she was yours,
this future corpse;
no matter how many lovers
she, her body, and I have,
only you know the curvature that stops your heart,
that’s the truth of it, only
you could hear
the mess of breaths and cries I make splitting
open,
my voice cracking in your
arms
even when this corpse is a corpse.
Because it all happened to
me, the real actual me.
I am yours. I am still I.
You must be still part-me,
but who wasn’t,
parting ways.
You could always replace me,
Go ahead, find another to
fill the me-shaped hole.
I would do the same.
Find a new person I’d also
call you,
another I’d hold with my cold, dead hands.
