Pistol Chasé

My fingertips trace

1932–1963.

The wind gathers me

like a mother

who still believes

her child can be saved.

My eyelids surrender.

I lean my head back,

and my mind blooms

with you

your words,

your ghosts,

how impossible it is

to ache for someone

whose hand I’ve never held.

The pages open themselves.

Lady Lazarus.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each line peels me open.

I don’t read you.

I remember you.

By the time I reach the kitchen,

I’m quiet.

The kind of quiet

that comes before a confession.

The stove glows

like its own small sun.

I press my hand against it.

Pain arrives late.

Then all at once.

Then not at all.

The room fills with a silence

that sounds too much like dying.

I think of you

Victoria Lucas.

The woman whose name

became mine.

The woman who taught me

how easily a self can split in two.

How easily a girl

can mistake survival

for disappearance.

I’m back at the boneyard,

counting the empty spaces,

wondering if one of them

has been waiting for me all along.

Would you recognize me?

By the scars?

By the poems?

By the way I keep trying

to bleed language

instead of blood?

Your blood is not mine.

But somewhere between your pages,

I learned

how to mistake another woman’s wound

for my own.