black lace

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Click here to read this poem on Scapegoat Review

 

What wisdom?
I am in a new
valley.  I no longer
weep.  It was silly to do so.  We lived together eighteen
years – eighteen equals
life according to the Kabbalah.  And in as many days,  I am

forgetting.  It

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was silly of me to cry – and besides you used it to
get back at me.  Why think of that photo you transported to your
new place – the three of us when our daughter was one
day old and my hair was
short – in the exact same pixie
cut she now wears?  She was too young to
smile, but we weren’t – and we
did.  Our daughter was
born.  She was meant to
be, but that has little to do with
us.  Your

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traces: a telephone
message from a doctor’s office unaware
of your new phone
number. A piece of
mail the post office has missed
relabeling.  A few
items of laundry – T-shirts stained
with perspiration, striped boxers with
stretched-out
waistbands – mixed
in with my clothes before you
moved
out.  I

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have no
desire to hear your
voice – that silk lining the
burlap, your anger not to be
trusted – nor do I ask to be
touched by you.  That last time, I would now call
rape.  Go on, cringe, but I know what
happened.  You’d requested black
lace and red
nail polish. I went shopping for
you. I just didn’t
realize. Afterwards, in the
shower, I under-
stood how
far away you’d
traveled.  It was
worse than being touched by a
stranger – it was
stranger.

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