All this time, you thought I was someone
else. Precious cargo and
a grove of tamarack trees nowhere
near where you run under the overpass.

This migraine, those stories, your character
wiped clean. The tension in those clenched-jaw
details once visible on the pavement.
This is no protest—

this ghost of a voice
in you trickles out. You think you see
the moon again before dawn.
Now that we’ve been reacquainted,

you will meet your own
handwriting next and skip every other
line to become the fragmented fragrance
I always dreamed you could be.

When someone covers Bowie’s “Heroes,”
and you see the road not taken,
and the horizon weaves its jagged way
behind a row of broken empty bottles, and,

oh, I know
I am so vain, and
we’re all just pushing each other
away, and that’s it.