Elegy for Myself
       

I have given up on being
beautiful, on debt, and detriment
to the ones I never loved enough.
The food was only fair most days,
the weather lacking, and the sex
not what I anticipated. Good-bye
climate of contempt, culture of claws.
I was not meant to live this long,
never memorized the code or
mastered the inflection. My thumbs not
fast enough. Good-bye tremble
and blush, spoiled pears, raw fish,
keys and petrol, paint samples and
drawers. Toss my crumpled pages.
Ink bleeds; there's no hereafter. Finito.
Adieu, fury, thorns, books, half-eaten orange.
Good-bye my anthills, gold ring, socks.
If there's another go-round,
reconstitute me bold,
less lonely. Sift me
into the lake I love.

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Copyright © 2019 Barbara Rockman All rights reserved
from to cleave
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission