Replaceable Until You’re Not.

by BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY

1

Throw your love until it sticks, and know
you’ll only know it stuck

if it ends up sticking. In case it does
in the end, in the beginning

just say “This is the one.” Whether or not
that’s true, trick yourself

into it being true, so you’re someone
who says truths.

The problem might be regret. It is so beautiful
to cry and remember,

if beauty is a knife wound. Memory, that disco light
makes for some unforgettable songs,

until morning. Will I have you? It’s impossible
to know, or impossible to have a person.

Why do we think we can?
I can’t yet forget the quiet music you gave me,

the lyrics I imagined in your voice.
Music’s ruthless that way: “Here are the words

and here’s the tune to how you feel. Doesn’t matter
you didn’t originate your own feelings.

We know you! Enjoy!” I may be a chump,
but at some point aren’t I irreplaceable?

2

When does being enough occur? When will I say
you and no other, you as long

as I can see, as long as I want, and I want infinitely.
Not indefinitely, which seems arbitrary,

but wanting precisely more, always,
of the same kind of thing.

When, because next year never happens, the wedding
plans sketched on scraps of paper

thrown out next misunderstanding. Fresh pages
replace them. Fresh scraps.

Eventually the heart I have to offer
is as hard and small and uni-purpose as a tack.

3

We only make this love work because we work for it,
like a wage, an art.

We are only each other’s because
the day is long.

The feeling, the opening wide, the blue glee,
laughing, ravenous together.

And at some point the question comes up,
of whether we could continue

and the answer is not quite yes, which isn’t quite no,
but then what is it?

Well, we both deserve something more than nothing,
neither of which this thing we’re doing ends up being.

So let’s split, let’s know, and make ourselves an old song of it:
“If I’m not it then it’s not me and you neither.”

Moving on, is what they call it. As if one moves,
instead of revises, reneges, replenishes.

When you get new shoes, do you throw out the old?
Do you buy the same style?

4

Not another one, you think, impossible.
Not again.

I can’t do it differently, I can’t do it
the same. I can’t.

You do. Opening. Being careful.
Being stupid.

Same beast of hope, beast of shame,
same terror, same space, different world.

Old world. Scary moment. Amazement
that breaks you.

You are not broken.  You break again
and again because

that’s what breaking means.
To be whole.

5

Maybe when we’re in the same nursing home,
neighbors again after decades apart,

surprised at our homing instinct.  Or maybe just
next year, happy with others,

having learned not to chuck the safe before cracking it.
At a friend’s book party,

you’ll notice how I’ve changed. In line
at the Apple Store, weary in the cab,

startled in the saladmarket, weepy at the doctor’s,
I’ll never change.

6

I’ll always be the same woman you loved,
this woman I no longer am,

I’ll be her and re-be her
because I can’t replace myself.

Here is the body you loved, she was yours,
this future corpse;

no matter how many lovers she, her body, and I have,
only you know the curvature that stops your heart,

that’s the truth of it, only you could hear
the mess of breaths and cries I make splitting open,

my voice cracking in your arms
even when this corpse is a corpse.

Because it all happened to me, the real actual me.
I am yours. I am still I.

You must be still part-me, but who wasn’t,
parting ways.  You could always replace me,

Go ahead, find another to fill the me-shaped hole.
I would do the same.

Find a new person I’d also call you,
another I’d hold with my cold, dead hands.

—

SOURCE: Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008)