This is the bed
you refuse to make
to prove you’re clean.
The gathering
of personalities
within the self
may be enough.
To hear the same
story told on the same
holiday each year
is nothing
to be thankful for. Nothing
against the narrator, but
it’s time for other
chroniclers gone awry
to take a turn.
If I could reduce the number
of times a day I believe
I’m a fraud.
Could understand why
some love objects get
labeled the Symbol,
others the Story—never
the End. If you could still
talk, would you tell me
the truth? Did you think
I was a virgin? Could you tell,
or did the blushing
camouflage fact,
heighten fiction’s glow?
If death has not rendered you
speechless, please spill
your signal over this chorus
chanting me home.
You said we need a story
too—all of us do. If only you knew
the truth. You are a sequel
to the one who died
nine years ago. Call me
Lolita once upon a time.
So busy recreating the narrative,
basic needs for water, nutrients, physical
touch become distorted. All narrators
are unreliable—he got killed
off too soon. Do you get the point—
there isn’t one. And I may not mark
my time so fiercely
around you. Each death smacks
of it, then The End
gets misplaced.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 