Verse:
Amin / Cmaj
Gmaj / Emaj7
Bridge:
Emaj7 / Emaj7/G#
I could never speak on you
because the wound was tender.
Whenever I would get your mail,
I’d write: ‘Return to Sender’.
I confess that now I scribe
‘Not at this address.’
I thought I would’ve healed inside
and disinfected this abscess.
I’ll cauterize the chasm,
I’ll anesthetize the aether,
I’ll inoculate against the incubus
until I break this fever.
I’ll pour this poem down the drain
the way I swallow pain:
All at once, in one big gulp,
until it floods my veins.
Bridge:
You told me that you fell out of love.
What sort of fall was it?
Was it a fall from grace or from a burning tower?
Was it cold and caught your breath
like the old winds of autumn?
When I fell out of love,
I forfeited my power.
They say the fall don’t do you in,
it’s when you hit rock bottom.
A trapdoor ejected me
when you finally
confessed to the truth:
BRIDGE
“I may have gaslit you.”
I fell out of love at terminal velocity,
like the urn that was lost from the Han Dynasty
Ai Weiwei smashed it to pieces
BRIDGE
just by letting go.
I went to pieces, I would have you know.
Now, I see your name like they were flakes of snow:
Mary or Marie, Marianne or Anna – they all sound like Mariana to me.
Bewitched like Dr. Frankenstein,
this poem comes to life
though its no child of mine.
I’m transfixed on stitches
because this cardio-
vascular cicatrix
is keeping me alive.
My doctor tells me I’mlucky
to have survived
BRIDGE
but now there’s scar tissue
scrawled all across my heart.
OUTRO
I recall you now the way
I trace a scar X 4
BRIDGE/OUTRO
by tracing it from the end
back to its start.