I.

Dearest I.,

Would you be so mad, and I feel certain you would,
if I just left, mysterious-like, no announcement,
no dragged out days to cry and say goodbye and are-
you-sure and all the rest, just one day I was gone
and my stuff gone God knows where, the cats I don't
know, although you would know they were somewhere
where they were happy, paintings left I guess, to some
gallery, maybe with deposit slips taped to their backs,
and a box, perhaps, with the most personal of things, left
on your back porch, would that make you saddest, or really,
maddest, the gall of my leaving, compounded by a box of half
memories, left to discover only after I had boarded some
train to nowhere? To somewhere out there?

Would postcards help, mailed, and then mailed again, from
somewhere else, disguising my secret hold-up, if they promised
that I was doing well, if even it seemed, because you know me,
that most likely I was not, because happy people, or even
people doing well, don't disappear into the night, but
even if I promised, and maybe related a happy instance,
or something that had happened in my new place that seemed
breezily pleasant, or like the kind of thing that would
happen to someone whose life was at least passably okay,
even though, as I think of it now, and knowing me, like
you do, that the postcards would become infrequent, or
always were, and then probably they would fade away
altogether?

I imagine my name from your mouth, and your lips would, for
a second, twist into sadness, but then by the end of my name,
would be twisted into, I think, more of a sneer, or at least some
shape where even a stranger could tell there was something afoul,
though I'm sure afoul would not be how you would describe it,
or me, I mean, of course for the leaving, but also for the
secretiveness, the finality of it, the unfairness that no one,
you most of all, had a chance to put in some vote, or to raise
some objection, to a plan, I'm sure, because I know you, too,
you would find stupid, and selfish, and mean. Would the mad,
the mad you felt, because I guess it would, taint the everything
else? Would you be more mad at the tainting, or at me?

Would you take my side, at least, wouldn't you, when it would come
up, at a party, or somewhere else inappropriate, and folks wouldn't
seem as fazed, or maybe they would come across as, or be, completely
unaffected, would you then, in those moments, ally you with me, maybe
see me, for those brief moments, as, if not heroic, or righteous,
because probably you would not, but sympathetic, or maybe, in a
piteous way, understandable? Could I ever seem understandable?

I mean, I., I am only asking, is all.

I am only asking.

Love, me.