Muse

So you’ve come back

to me, again, at last,

to leave—walked me this far

through crowds to say that, here,

you must turn a corner,

distance yourself,

throw this fiction of us on the pyre;

with a smirk on your face,

watch it burn—eyes in awe

as a patron of torture;

you, who would be most constant

when the caucuses of early hour

begin to bicker in the brain:

what word to hold you in place

beneath this captive’s power

or persuade a part of you

to concede itself to savior,

to haul this burden into some other life?