Maybe I am my own happening.
Maybe I am the beginning of the story,
before you walk in with your bad jokes
and your three years of silence
scattered across the turnpike.
I am trying to think about the moment
that I started crying, and I think it
was when I realized that all of my poems
were about you.
But maybe they weren’t.
Maybe I was just drawing you in between
the line breaks because I was lonely
and didn’t know how else to fill in the moments.
Maybe I am my own poem.
Maybe I am the reason my hands shake,
why I can’t say no to you even when
you aren’t asking me for anything.
Maybe I am the bad days.
Maybe I am my own sun.
Maybe I am in charge of my own undoing, of my own healing.
Who taught me to thank the ones
who didn’t want to stay?
Who taught me that you were something
to hurt about?
Maybe it was me.
I think it was.
Maybe I want to rest my tongue in
my own mouth and maybe I don’t
actually need anything from you.
I could be the moment it all started.
I could be responsible for the violins
in my throat, for the piano in
my teeth.
Maybe you were never the music in me.
Maybe I have always been singing.