I don't know what I forgot,

love, but I hate all the words for it. Like recollection, you hit me--

like you're lightning and I am just a cable satellite dish wondering, "How 

can something that'd stop your heart 

come out like The Notebook?" But if I know anything it's that

I hate to be cute, so I'll ask a real question now: is it that 

I can't remember love or how to 

love a memory? I get to bumbling because a lot 

of people have told me a lot of things 

about love and poetry and love poetry. Yawn, I know. Are you still reading, 

G? See, this one time 

L said poetry came too easy to me; obviously, it was my life I needed 

to fix, not my language. Someone else said simply, "don't."

Was that me? Oh, and everyone knows what H wrote: words 

are elegy to what they signify. Isn't that a tad too TV for you? For us? Unless he was talking 

purely in the scientific sense of the minute interstice between a reality outside 

my body and--yeah, I'll say 

"blackberry," then put one between my teeth--"mm, sweet." A lapse 

large enough to slip a sheet of paper through. Maybe a sonnet? I'd rather sonata. 

The truth is, cuteness keeps the tragedy at bay. 

I'll try again. L, the secret to being

prosaic isn't such a secret after all. If you asked,

I would write novels about how I'm too scared 

to poetry,

to really 

poetry, because 

poetry makes everything an other

serious question. Like: is it really language 

that fits the prude-glove of making love 

over balls-deep boning? Yuck, I'm sorry, I meant 

fucking. The road 

to obfuscating all intention is paved 

by people who teach other people how to language. People

like me. Bet you're paying attention now. I'm sorry, did I--did you hear 

the other shoe drop? Just this once, I'll try to say it

to you straight: I used to own this 

pair of slip-on Converses. Black, of course, but with a silver 

arabesque print on the toe box. Hm. Was it arabesque or tribal, truly? I suppose 

whichever one doesn't give you 

the hipster heebie-jeebies. Anywho, the shoes

had white salt-stains of summer in the lining and daises threaded 

through the eyelets. They were made of the summer I learned to love 

E, believe me. And the sun was so sunny it hurt a little, even when I closed 

my eyes, and the sky so clear I wanted to say "redemption" out loud and "home" out 

louder, like I was really just twenty-two, just like the rest 

of you, 

and everything they told me 

about California was true for the love of--

for the love of the word. You were right, L. Poetry used to be easy 

because I used to be happy

to not tell it like it is. Yes, I used to go for long

walks to look at the leaf-crowds and link arms with the wind,

my skin sweating from the touch of so many light-fingers, 

and I've allowed myself that luxury. 

Yes, I've loved so many 

versions of myself and called them 

by others' names. G,

you are the man who threw the wrench.

Isn't it always a man? Women, I understand, inside and under

me. I am one. But you

are the kind of man who'll bend over for me 

to peg you with a strap-on even though you know 

the formal logic of why

that's no inverse of where I come

from. How to love without leaving

any you or me behind, that's what I can't--

I can't recollect 

mountains from sand. I fell for a man, 

you, in November and you still trip

up my tongue. Forget poetry, here's all you need 

to know about me: 

whether arabesque- or tribal-patterned, I poked my big toe 

through one of those Converses, and then I had to 

throw them both away. I used a stranger's pen

I never touched again 

to cleave me from E, who was once my husband. 

I wrote this poem and called you G 

but you are really something, 

someone, else. 

So you go on ahead, 

introduce yourself.