clone keeps a diary
clone writes in code
clone taunts me
We’d moved halfway across the country, clone says, my wife and I, I hadn’t yet been fired
and she undiagnosed, after I walked her to work I wandered past the lake, a marching band
at practice, drums in the wind and I know this is stupid but marshes waving to the beat you
know that feeling where everything you read is about you? your wife driving at night, she
needs glasses, you’re drunk, two hills, improper to say one hides the other if both in sight,
the first reveals the second
relieved—clone
goes on like this, plays
solitary, reads
my palm—and it was like that: a marching band playing for me, we had argued in the car,
one of us didn’t trust the other, (were you the one who didn’t trust?), blind blessing of the
lake, we couldn’t believe our luck; the deer leapt straight into the air above us, like in a
cartoon: a fish escaping his fate by impersonating an insurance salesman
clone tells the truth—
born special, I can fly, but only
as fast as I walk, run or swim
like you like that you are writing your own story, forgetting other people in it, you will never
really know them
(you are them)
there is one thing each loves more than survival, what won’t you try to save them from?
