Although she understood what it meant to be him <br />She saw earlier than he did what it was to lose everything <br />And so she tried to bury all that was within her <br />She threw it into the lagoon <br />Dug holes beneath coconut trees <br />But palms don’t sit deep enough <br />And the tide brought everything back <br />She’d try to attend to it <br />In secret, behind a closed door <br />With music loud and images moving <br />But instead of keeping it all as some kind of manageable <br />Mass it grew, nurtured by the privation of light <br /> <br />Although she understood what it meant to be him <br />She asked for photographs of happy days <br />Of the conventional, as if this might reinforce some sense of normality <br />But he gave her scans of his brain <br />X-rays of his head <br />A spectral reminder of what they both shared <br />His feint facial contours wrapped around bone <br />Missing and replaced teeth testament to <br />Age and gnawing life through flesh her own teeth breaking <br />There was no escape from the emergent sense <br />Of fight within her <br /> <br />Although she understood what it meant to be him <br />Most of what she wanted to become <br />Involved her leaving traces of him <br />Behind her on the one road between the houses <br />Scatterings of genealogy marking the <br />Bends delineating which side <br />On which to drive <br />She was always confused as to which side was the right side <br />When the wind was pushing across her face her bones her brain <br />Scanned with her eyes to see if all the <br />Parts had fallen and if she was free <br />There is no escape from the DNA of creation<br /><br />J.L. Nash<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ars-poetica-6/
