Who is this impostor,
glimpsed with horror
in the department store window?
He apes my movements
but fails to capture
their athleticism,
spring-loaded inside an easy grace.
Ladies and gentlemen, do not be deceived.
Disregard those who think they know me.
This shambling simulacrum
is not me.
Perhaps my Nobel prize
is just a might-have-been,
my endowments only imagined.
But I am who I want me to be.
All aboard for the unguided tour!
Already begun, pre-planned
by an unknown administrator,
its detailed itinerary remains unpublished.
The last stage is, they say, less delightful than the others.
It passes through the poorer districts;
one sees industrial squalor and boarded-up lives.
I can leave the tour at any time.
I am who I want me to be.
Discomfort and dissolution do not belong in my world.
I am not the kind of person to ever be distraught.
So oblivion shall not swallow my love's soul.
Not all at once,
not piece by piece.
Not even a little.
Her identity must not be corrupted.
We are who I want us to be.