A poet in 1601 writes praise songs in secret
about his patron’s 17-year-old niece’s lips,
and in a 1962 novel, a Chinook chief
convinces everyone at the asylum he’s deaf
and mute so they’ll leave him alone.
I don’t understand History and can’t
stand my own past. Neither should have
happened, but both keep roaring.
I’m glad the wind stopped, but I miss
my roof and doors, the way they made me
invisible from outside. I know a janitor
who pretends to have a plate in his head.
He says he wants to be invisible as wallpaper.
Okay, I made him up. He’s the protagonist
in my unpublished novel. He harbors secrets
about himself, about his ex, about enough
to fill a book, which he’s secretly written.
My therapist canceled on me today because
she’s lost her voice, so for now I’ll keep my secrets
though they snarl at me. No one admits
throwing that apple core at the lion
at the zoo, who wakes and yawns when the perp
secretly hoped for a roar. All I know for sure
is that all of us have dirt under our fingernails
or blood on our hands, and all of us are afraid that
something that’s already happened will happen again.