the wall
there are so many poems
I’ll never write
no matter how firmly they press
against my ribs
trying to burst from inside me
into the heat I was warned about
I won’t write them because
to set them free
would leave my softest tissue
exposed to the open air
blood vessels turning red as they
bathe in the oxygen
though I may be remembering that
incorrectly
yesterday she asked if you had broken
some structure inside me
like a load-bearing wall
that keeps me standing straight
it would be easy to say yes
but it wouldn’t be true
the problem was never a collapse
but a slow erosion
like that beach on Cape Cod
where I played as a child
now just a few feet of sand and weeds
bordering a parking lot
to go back to the earlier metaphor
I’m rebuilding the wall
no, more than that, I’m strengthening it
so it will bear even more
and unlike the last one, my new wall
has a door
so that when the time is right
I can let myself out
or let something beautiful in
9 April 2013
Auburn AL
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