I Capture

Let's talk about something else.
I have decided that I am not going to grow
into anything other than who you think I am,
and that in this, I will finally be life-size;
happy. Through you, I will save myself –
memories of a scrap of civilisation, bone
china and tectonic plates - a relic
for the children of friction, clutching
at my wrist bones, my knee caps,
their scattered gravity.

Once, someone said We are all born undone,
and that we would find ourselves in nots –
the hips, the ankles, the knots of rib and spine.
The spacetime in between. I capture
the tarsal, frozen in a footprint;
you, a series of scars.

This is what I want to believe in:
the architecture of a fiction,
of a woman with a Mona Lisa smile.
I am not what I am, but what you see:
a whorl of semiotics; an artist's impression
of me.

* * *

Enough talk about me. Let's talk about you.
What do you think of me?
(L7, 'I Need')


I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons I write confessional poetry - to get someone else to answer the questions I can't.

Quote is from Moll Flanders. Which I still haven't finished. First lecture is tomorrow! :\