hook
d. michael mcnamara
You are hooks,
with your names
written on them,
which I get caught on:
I keep fumbling around,
wasting time,
tracing my steps,
gnawing off limbs.
When the light is on
and I can’t escape
I know no other way
than primitive.
I keep thinking of John,
how he took the bottle
from me but how I
wasn’t there to do the same.
Of Terri, whose car
I was supposed
to be driving
the night she was crushed.
Of Alexis, who wasn’t home
the night I called
from an interstate payphone
to express my concerns
about living without a heart.
Of the girl I scared
at the airport in Newark
flying to Colorado.
Of Hannah, who makes me ache,
and Stephanie
who is to be wed,
and my mother&father
and grandparents&sister
and friends&lovers
and future acquaintances
and complete strangers.
This is some sort
of self-fulfilling elegy,
some sort of attempt
to come clean.
I want to crawl inside you,
or pull you into me,
or just hang on your hook
and bleed.
When your light is on me
I feel primitive
and this is when
I want to cry.
I could break things.
I could scream.
I could grab you
and kiss you
and feel our warm tears
and synchronized breaths:
what is so difficult
about the meaning of life?
I could play back
these memories
frame by frame
or in slow motion.
There is a blur
visible only
in retrospect
that makes me nauseous.
I have collected you
inside of me
to carry wherever I am
fumbling around.
I trace these steps
late at night,
follow them like lines
grown in your face.
This is my own elegy,
my attempt to come clean:
your portion of my bitter
love for this world,
your invitation to my movie,
my thank you
for sustaining me,
bleeding, on your hook.
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