Know the end of our devastated room:
I tell my beloved that exactly
where it is hardest to write
is where I should double down
and write. Denise Levertov’s poet
is brought to speech—what I write
“wakes in [my] demand: the poem.”
We promise, a requisite ache. I teach him how to balance
my narrative—the matter of my life
as he has experienced—with the lyric
intensity of my contrapuntal songs,
when my poems lift like crows
cawing their prayers—: time stops. Or,
how to unbraid my autobiography
into sections and ply them
into images, to lift tense, syntax,
and perspective for a single story
that arrives at what I want to say—
because I’ve said it. That is the responsibility of
the writer as advocate: how my moments
unfold into a life arc
as a disciplined reader. To control
my beloved’s breath as my reader—
that’s how I know I command. In writing
my pardons, I charm my way out
of imprisonment. The “I” that is me,
writing it, hurts because I question
from where the intimacy settles—: a character
sharpened by my beloved’s mercy,
by our admitted failures.