Book of Memory

In my seeing there was a blank and he filled that blank

with words, there were words for darkness which made it lift,

there were words for cover which ripped them off,

there were legs that crossed and hearts that crossed,

promises red and read, and the pluck of banjo had a name

for that twang, and the way he called the world into notice,

that had a word, too. Once I saw I couldn’t unsee

and the worst was that the light glaring from the letters

left blue haze under my eyelids. There are no photographs

of this time, and I can only go by what others

tell me: I was blurred and erratic, I drew a circle

of white chalk around me and called myself inviolate,

I watched for horses on the horizon, my walls

were under siege from smaller men who called themselves

heroes. They say I reached over the balustrade and picked

up the tiny ships and threw them over the edge of the world.

I tore my hair, cut one breast from my body and plattered it

as around my fortifications one man pulled another man

behind his chariot. If they say that’s how I was,

that’s how I was. I have no words for the one in the mirror

who apes me every morning. She’s not the one I remember

imagining as a young girl. There must be a way to unsee

how I tap the glass and she taps back, and which wall,

which Cassandra weeping—everything I saw I spoke to his ear,

and the wall crashed into place between us, the horse

had a bellyful of it, the blank was full of small soldiers,

and he turned from my beauty and said my name.

Source: Vow (Cleveland State University Press Poetry Center, 2013)