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What was I thinking when you asked if I wanted to see
and I said yes? I saw it then. I see it now.
Poems are the only places to keep such scenes.
You opened your robe and lifted off the gauze with ease.
I saw a barbed wire fence cut through a field of snow.
What was I thinking when you asked if I wanted to see?
I should have closed my eyes and imagined the sea
instead of staring at your chest sewn shut, your skin so raw.
Poems are the only places to keep such scenes.
Did I hate God or whoever I believed
controlled the world? Did you die then? Did I? I won’t allow
what I was thinking. When you asked if I wanted to see,
you smiled, or so it seemed. How easily
you lifted off the gauze. I saw an eye stitched closed.
Poems are the only places to keep such scenes.
Twenty-seven years after your death, there’s still this need
to play it back. Each time I close my eyes, it grows.
What was I thinking when you asked? I wanted to believe
poems were the only places such scenes could be.
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