I have a pack of letters, <br />I have a pack of memories. <br />I could cut out the eyes of both. <br />I could wear them like a patchwork apron. <br />I could stick them in the washer, the drier, <br />and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt? <br />Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss. <br />Besides - what a bargain - no expensive phone calls. <br />No lengthy trips on planes in the fog. <br />No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest. <br />That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow. <br />Blessing us. Blessing us. <br /> <br />Am I to bless the lost you, <br />sitting here with my clumsy soul? <br />Propaganda time is over. <br />I sit here on the spike of truth. <br />No one to hate except the slim fish of memory <br />that slides in and out of my brain. <br />No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgown <br />brushing my body like a light that has gone out. <br />It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems, <br />meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need. <br />Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path - <br />all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox. <br />The monotonous dead clog me up and there is only <br />black done in black that oozes from the strongbox. <br />I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs, <br />of two who were one upon a large woodpile <br />and ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirl <br />into flame, reaching the sky <br />making it dangerous with its red.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-inventory-of-goodbye/
