We make up our own ends to things.
The way I'll watch a movie all the way through only once,
And then every time after that only to a certain point:
The moment before everything goes wrong.
Dreaming a new ending where the soldiers never come,
Where the wolf is still alive,
And the wife still believes he's going to work every morning,
Coming home with a new cologne.
The way he says it's like reading your poems:
I love them until I remember they're about me.
The way I keep writing poems about him
To slip paper cuts under his fingernails.
I make up a happy ending for the movie in my head
But I don't write it down.
I only write down the shitty parts.
I only write down the wounds he's licked over with apologies but never shut,
The skin that parted under the sharpness of his indifference,
Or indecision – those are antonyms, he says, but they taste the same.
I only write down the cuts on my arms where I opened veins
For the blood to write this down.
We make up endings to stories where we're the heroes,
Where we said just the right thing instead of only thinking it,
Retelling like winding cotton candy—
It gets bigger with every turn
I'm still alive,
I still believe you when we say goodbye.
I make up an end to the story but I don't write it down:
I turn the movie off,
The soldiers don’t come,
I am not the wolf and this is not my blood.