It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting
alone on the bed, back to wall,
laptop toasting my bare thighs,
coffee mug engaged.
I want to send a freshly heartbroken
friend the title of a book I believe
can help her, record of another
left-woman’s struggle to grasp
“all this” as even real, though
I plan to suggest this friend
wait a little while yet,
given how fresh the break.
I enter my terms, click the first link
listed, noticing right off an image—
the book’s front cover,
different than I remember
and uncanny in its depiction
of my own bedroom:
one part of one ivory wall,
an angular, cream-colored clock
in the tidy style of the 1950s
hanging, little hand on the 11,
big hand just past the 12, cord reaching
down to an outlet below.
Not quite trusting, I move my eyes
from screen to wall, wall to screen,
but the sameness stays.
My own experience—a slow patient
opening of the heart—is with me,
always with, and I consider
the connection between these things:
the broken heart, the breaking-open
heart, The End of the Story,
the crisp mirror image…
This seems as good a place as any
to begin.
--me
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