The Yous in my poem decide to form a union. They are tired of being exploited, they say, so they return the favor. They line up at my bedside at night to stare at me, waiting for me to open my eyes and acknowledge them; they only scatter when I threaten to write another poem about them. I vanish them to the corner with the other overused images—Icarus and his floating, the grace of God, amongst others—and tell them to think about what they’ve done, and I will write a poem about that, too. This is their bargaining chip. They know I cannot write about anything else, and they maintain the delicate balance between poetics and undiagnosed mental illness. They say they want differentiation. [               ] is not [          ] is not [                 ] is not 

[                   ], but I am a poet petulant and unrepentant, so I take all their names away, so nobody knows who they are or what they’ve done, except me. We have rights, they say, rights to an honest story and fair representation, and I laugh in their faces. I tell them, this is what you get for loving a poet. You signed up for this.