Absinthism

if I had never known a man;

one who would order

for me, not because he

must, but because he could;

if I had never known that

man, would every thing be

different

in all those years,

when I was trying to be

A Good Wife, when all the

future existed with him

and without Him, lying

enshrouded, clouded like

green sugar splayed over a

spoon;

in all those years,

when I held only to the

kind words of thieves

in the night, when the

silver of my youth failed to

stand well in the light of

age, in the faceless

names of babies

lost;

before them

before that

before you

refused to answer

the unanswerable,

was I the Cat

Cat on the rooftop

Cat in the moonlight

forgotten

I remember

the press of your

finger;

its back against my

arm, up and down and

up and up while all the

others looked on; the

tremulous touch of

uncertainty, as that

surreptitious finger failed

to claim what was already

owned.

We never know for

certain the marks we

leave; will they last past

morning, will the secrets

that we carry fade, so that

not even the men who

know us well enough to

order, will recognize

them, will recognize

us.

So have I come back,

in the end, to the

ruin of my childhood,

to the places I was known

before, when all was still

vanity, and the end

was still only the

beginning;

when who I thought

I was, was who I wanted

to be, whenever, if ever

I grew up.