always am,
every day that I wake,
I must make myself
perform;
I repurchase the lessons
which I came to know
by closing
my eyes and
rehearsing them again:
all the things we did
and didn't—
the former, like a melody,
the latter, its strange and
syncopated rhythm—
and all the I swears
and never agains I offered
which you
had no space for
and couldn't afford—
now, a discrepancy
buried deep in the score,
like two
conflicting fingerings
for the very same chord.
