What Else Should I Be?

Apology:

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me

and I believe you. How could I not feel

you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass,

or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving.

If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you.

It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant.

Maybe you darken, already too much changed,

maybe in your house you would be content where

no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air,

such things held simply to be voiceless.

And if you mean me, I believe you.

Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent,

and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager

incidents the words. Some books

should stay formal on the shelves.

So surely I heard you, in your complication aware,

snow holding where it might weightless rest,

and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent,

too much arranged—I might believe you

but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow,

here where it seems no good word emerges.

Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance

could lose these blinking hours to simple safety.

Here is an inwardless purpose.

In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty,

amounting to something. How could I not

wait for those few words, which we might enter.

Joanna Klink.