A Few Forgotten Things

Disappearances

Where have you gone?
I believe I saw your back
disappearing over the black
hill, but I cannot be certain
it was you. Maybe it was myself
I saw, or a ghost of myself,
so murky and muddled I
could not make out the particular
features that made it unique.
All that I know is that you
are not here now, and I want
to believe you are gone,
not left, for it is so much
better for the both of us.

Letter to the Editor

I know what you're doing, you harlot--
you think I don't know, but I know it.
You think I am dumb in my silence;
you think you're escaping my notice.
You've never seen me:
I climb down in between things.
I've always had a talent for sneaking
unseen through even the most well-lit
rooms. I can hide in plain sight,
and at night I need not even cover
my head with the blankets. No one
knows me here. No one knows me anywhere.
I am only a faint feeling. People recognize
I have a face, they just aren't sure
whose it is. And the invisible, the ignored
see everything, the same way you can't
bullshit a bullshitter.

I know what you're doing, you overgrown
ingenue. You think you're still slick, but I
know that sickness. I had it once, a fever
in the middle of a summer morning,
bright and sharp as a burning red stamp.
My dear, you don't scare me. You are me--
I was you. I feel so tricky remembering your
tricks as I watch you perform them. You pull
a rabbit out of a hat, but I can see the hole in
the bottom and the man under the table.
So leave me be or don't, it doesn't matter.

The end is the same either way.