So I may never ascend again,
may never even get out of bed,
may never find my uncharged phone
in the dark to check
how hurt you were by the fix,
by the algorithm I invented
to decide if my mouth was too much,
if my hands were too busy,
if your back and neck would ever
again be bare and beneath my lips
where I lisp and bite and worry my way
down the curve of a damaged spine.
Were we vines to be spliced into
another vine to heal?
No. Were we books to be mended?
I have sewn a book together once.
I did not do it well. I should have, though, laid,
merely, myself next to a self on a shelf.
But I opened into righteous helping. I could have
gone to the library for the new novels
you could fondle and love and return. I did not
know how our brittle backs might break
when we tried to open one another beyond
what old stitches can bear.
You, remain unsolved. You were not
a problem to figure.
I remain dissolved. I was always dust and string.
