poem: war + peace, scarlett o’hara, plato (& her)

I have known too much to be secure in what I have known. Even I

am sick of this narrative: here is the danger-warning, so listen:

rewriting the narrative inside your head so that what happened happened

differently is (please don’t make me finish this face this). long sigh, and tucking the

hair behind my ears: it is

shit. it is good stupid sophisty. Plato probably would have applauded me but

I licked the hemlock off his clapping fingers so he had the last laugh

in the end. Coming aware in the nights like this, jolting up from over-soft blue

sheets and seeing mountains with glassy breaking pink suns as

boring; texting him like an adulteress and feeling the mental shifts break open to

yet another blank grey long page. When you achieve what you think is everything

but it is just one more nothing. When you achieve nothing and over-diagram it

in your head, anyway. It is a curious thing, like being cold inside yourself, like

college-level deconstruction theory, like a three-minute gloam between

arching black bare trees: to meet your soulmate or at least

the male version of yourself with his mind spun up, left-wired and nimble fingers

over his flickering keyboard.

(and waking up to his name on your phone him replying to your text but that was before you knew everything of course of course of course)

The drugs, the stimulus always wear off. I am Scarlet O’Hara if I follow him to Atlanta, to

Scotland, to the second semester of my third year and his exact plans, to his magazine

subscriptions (which at least makes her smarter). She is

Andre, more Pierre

and he was mostly just Andre, Natasha tucked like a flower in the top levels of his

phone contacts. She (yes, I have, I promise) has already stepped down

and away: her morality is still hers, u n fortunately. she is

she is

Shit, I guess this makes me Sonya. I haven’t finished the book yet but I doubt that

she ends up happy either.