So there’s this poem on my hard drive. I do not recall ever writing it. It sits in a folder with other poems I wrote, but I have a suspicion that I actually read it somewhere, loved it, and typed it in to keep it around. Or it was sent to me by a friend who writes, in a letter or something — quite possible, actually. The memory eludes me. Aspects of it don’t sound to me like my writing, though other aspects do.

I have Googled for it, and never found it online. But there are billions of poems that are not online. So I am posting it, and maybe someone out there knows where the heck it came from. It’s in a folder for 1995. And no matter who wrote it, I think it’s worth a read. So maybe the collective wisdom of the Internet can figure it out.
Shadow Diaries

Hers: When they contort
on their bed and cast me
at the wall, arching hungrily
at the dresser, caught half
closeted, speared by the bedpost,
I feel hollow.

His: We hardly know
you know; we lock faces and edges
until we are one creature
without spaces inside us.

Hers: when her body bulges
and she caresses her womb before
a window of startling sun,
my baby cries within me, step-staired
and distorted; when she runs
her hand across the venetians
I ripple and contract like labor.

His: it seems like I
will explode, and shatter
onto the living room ceiling
a midnight of dark stars.

Hers: if I could I would saw
at my ankles until I was free.

His: when he was a boy
he jumped outside and then I
did not touch him.

Hers: when she was a girl
she did not spend such time
in dark places.

His: The best I can hope for is noonday
when I can puddle shapeless
resting on feet.

Hers: When I am not taunted by them.
When shape does not matter anymore.