en pointe

shared hearts, but you hid some valves
a few words you possessed but did not share ...
I was in your room Saturday, looked
and looked and read the words
you'd never say to me

I checked all the cars going by
though I knew you were in school
the valves open, close in my chest
the river runs, leaves racing
down its course
what did we know?

a list now of the questions
your mother could not know to ask:

1) are you trapped in amber or in ice?
2) did you love your father more than you loved me?
3) is Kelly inside of you, does she remind you
of how sad you have become?
4) are your curtains always closed now?
5) has your arch begun its deterioration
6) inside those black eyes is there some memory of me?

a new popsong you cherish
supertramp in the afternoon
breakfast in america
no one can let you out
you have hidden the key

the heart is not a machine you can take apart and fix
mine slumps in the afternoons, still full of your memory
the miracle dissembles
the days and nights pound in me
the chest is a cage for this sadness


This piece centers on the period after I was told not to see B. anymore in October, 1979. CF, my good friend and B's mother, went to Champaign to the Red Herring that day with Gael Cox. When she returned she was determined to get her daughter away from the situation. I told her, at that time, that I would leave so she wouldn't have to uproot her family. B. had been abused by her father from the age of six, so the reference to him is quite pointed. Before moving to Washington Street B. sometimes called herself "Kelly." And of course B. was, at this point, obsessed with ballet, thus the "arches" line. This piece was published in The Alchemist Review in January, 1980.