When you ask me how I am doing,
you are asking me to lie.
You die for a relationship
with a pocketed picture of me at age ten;
forced smile, teeth bared
(because it’s normal, because
if I am normal
then we will all be okay, I’d say).
A twenty-six-year-old image,
sun-scorched and dog-eared,
clutched in digits victim
to muscle wasting:
white-hot grip beginning
when I, as I am now,
began to begin; ischemia letting
no new blood in.
The mind is not a muscle.
Isometrics bring no new tone—
only atrophy. Nothing more.
A white-knuckled mind will not let me go.
Again:
who am
I
to Be?
(You mistakenly/mindlessly
gave me back a scarf I made
for you, years ago.
It will now go to someone in need.)
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