In the first place,
I wasn't already dead.
That was just something you told me
to keep me more pliant,
less argumentative.

I found that out one day
while you were at work.
Pricked my finger on a chef's knife
and discovered I could bleed.
Interesting.

I started poking around,
looking for other deceptions.

The black cat
you gave me was real,
weaving in and out
between my ankles.
That was an easy one.

In a box of old photographs
I found you on a bicycle,
tearing down a maple-lined street.
Aha! You had always told me they were elms.
But okay; probably not revenge fodder.

I started searching in earnest now,
rifling through drawers and
upending mildewed boxes.
Old credit card bills,
pieces of a promise to quit smoking.

In your desk drawers there were
old college papers, valentines,
and a compendium of poems
you were always going to
sort through and publish.

In the pages of your mother's Bible,
I found the shards of your fidelity
taped together under a
sprig of dried flowers.
That was more like it.

So no; to begin with I wasn't dead.
But what you have to understand
is that it's not for lack of trying.
Because I found your love, whole and unblemished,
and death is the only sure way to hurt you.

12/10/2011

Posted on 12/10/2011
Copyright © 2026 Kristine Briese