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I am not here to ruin you. I am already in you. I am the work you don’t do. I am what you understand best and wordless. I am with you in your chair and in your song. I am what you avoid and what you stop avoiding. I am what’s left when there is nothing left. Love me hard, pilgrim.
Copyright © Sarah Manguso. From the forthcoming collection Siste Viator (Four Way, 2006). Used with permission of the author.
That we rode harder into the wind,
That the story got told,
That the broken candies were eaten first,
That they were eaten last,
That all subjects grew extinct eventually,
That in the inn I ruined our lives,
That in the barn I tried to save them,
That I failed,
That per Fitzgerald the manner remains intact for some time after
the morale cracks,
That in the interregna all suffer equally,
That the languages we are born ready to speak leave us one by one,