(backwards)

Sometimes I think
of reading my life
backwards,
as someone might
some day be able
to do. Though who
would want to,
but me? Of starting
today & going through
as much as
I have kept, until
I got back to the
thin-lined books
that made me
squeeze my hand
writing down tight
(so that I could not
see how to live
my own life.}

Those hard-bound
books, I always
began with the
renewed faith
I could be like
that. The kind
of books that elicit
lies. That make
us doubt ourselves
if the things we
need to say,
seem an insult
to their calico covers.
I never lived
that kind of life,
and never made
it to the end of
one of those books.
But continually
took up another
in a different color,
or size.
Like serial
monogamy,
the only way
to keep doing it
by beginning
again.

3/12/99