Tonight's Poet Corner: I Still Love You

I Still Love You
by Belinda Roddie

The turmoil comes in snaps and bursts,
almost as if the winter chill is preparing
to make the pipes in your brain explode,
the inner cerebral plumbing threatening
to spill everything - truths, lies, choices,
reluctances. You never wanted her to know
your doubts, but she knows them. She sees

how simply you've tattooed them as a sleeve
on your pulsing flesh. Sees the ripples producing
sounds along your body. It's white noise, the
kind that sets your teeth on a war zone border
rather than easing the lactic tension in your
muscles. It makes each separate hair stand
erect and report for duty on the military assembly

line, and you will report for duty, sir, even
if it kills you by sundown. You want to stitch
your lips closed with silver, even while you dwell
in a laboratory world where everything
is open-ended - everything is revealed on a steel
table with just a little bit of dissection, the blade
of the silicon scalpel hot against your frozen

temples, your frozen mosques and synagogues.
You prayed because it was private. You confessed
your sins because only one short and overweight
man in a Roman collar listened to your words. You
never expected her to put the seashell of your
trespasses against her ear. Instead of the ocean,
she gets twenty minutes of primal screaming, of

dissonant questions, of ill harmonious wondering
over what a second life would be like. If second
chances were taken without her. She sets the
metaphorical conch down, places her hands
against your head just below the curves
of your eye sockets, pressing the bone flat
like poets' paper. She reminds you to breathe.

The turmoil comes in snaps and bursts, but
she warms every sinew with her touch. She
reiterates that imagining alternate endings
is not a mortal sin. Thought alone does not
condemn. Nothing condemns. Not unless
you tear away the fabric of someone else's
tapestry, but you can at least contemplate

what it'd be like to sew new colors into
your own. Nothing to worry about. Nothing
to stew over in a cold, cold room. Besides,
she's done it herself - doubted, wondered,
second guessed until her hands went numb.
She thinks about past loves while you cling
to the random scenarios out of a video game.

You both deserve each other. Because as much
as your gray matter throbs between you with
these daydreams, you still chose the reality that
hovers between you. On the couch. Where you drink
wine, eat chicken, watch a British baking show and
laugh over a contestant's cheeky attempt at lemon
meringue. You both chose this. You chose it. You chose.