13.I Think Of Regular, Ordinary Things, Throughout My Regular, Ordinary Life, And Sometimes You Arrive. Unannounced. I Don’t Panic, Because Nothing Could Ever Make Me Miss Us More Than I Missed Us While We Were Still Together.

ARE YOU LYING TO YOURSELF?

No, but I’m dishonest. No, but I’m forgetful. No, but

I’m creating an emergency out of the way I don’t

recognize myself in the mirror. No, but I’m putting a

period on the end of my adolescence and hoping that

completes it. No, but I’m lying to everyone else. No,

but maybe. No, but sometimes the absence is better

than the truth. I say “no” because I’m too afraid of

“yes.” I repeat the same thing over and over, hoping it

will distract you from seeing how little I know myself

at all.

& that’s the truth.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

PAREIDOLIA

It’s been over a year and I still look for him

in everything. A reflex I can’t stop responding to.

I cling with blistered hands and bitter heart to any

story, any fiction, any song remotely like ours, as if

it’ll give our conclusion meaning.

Or, at the very least, a name I can call out

when I’m fading away.

Even in make-believe kitchens that were never written to hold his

body, his fingerprints decorate the sugar jar.

Every time I confuse us with adults in love

I move further away from the reality

of whatever we were.

I REENACT “THE LAST FIVE YEARS” IN MY KITCHEN INSTEAD OF GOING TO THERAPY

I close my eyes and imagine the scenario

which never changes. My ex

has come to see the show not knowing

I’m playing the lead. I am the grand surprise,

the knife in his evening, a smile dripping with

promises quickly retracted. For an hour

and sixteen minutes my name is Cathy Hiatt.

Singing to my chipped kitchen cabinets

is the only release I have from these endless days

of pushing through windows.

Props line the countertops, ready to supplement

choreography I’ve memorized, blending fiction

and reality into an edible pulp.

It’s for the art, I tell myself backstage, shaking in the

living room, tears like the Hudson. You’re acting, and

it’s for the art, and you’re on stage, and this is real

life, so don’t mess up, girl. You auditioned for this

role. You fit it so perfectly.

Always it comes down to both of us, Cathy and

Caitlin, sitting on linoleum

after the curtain’s been drawn shut, wondering

how he could’ve given up so easily.

Contemplating the words we should’ve said

instead of written into a song, or poem.

And then there’s him, moving on,

reinventing the world with little more than a pen.

We weren’t asking to be rescued.

No, we just wanted to be the type of girl