LIFE Poem: Night 32, by Sean MacPhee

My girlfriend was staying at her house,
My mom had put out another cigarette into my arm that afternoon,
and I couldn’t sleep.
So I took up the journal my girlfriend gave me and flipped through the poems.
I tried to write new ones,
I tried to rewrite old ones,
but it didn’t feel right.

You came to my door sorta late at night, holding poppies.
“Those aren’t yours,” I said.
“I know,” you said, “But they mean something to you.”
“You don’t know what,” I said.
“I know,” you said again. “But I know she gave them to you before.”
“You aren’t my girlfriend,” I said.

I tore up my poems about you.
We didn’t have a paper shredder, so I tried to do the shredding.
I felt loathing. For myself, for my sister, and for myself again.
“You aren’t real,” I said. “You never were.”

“But I am,” you said. “Look at your wrist.”
I did, there the loops were, over my scar.
The crow landed on your shoulder, the one you screamed at me wasn’t real.
But you said, “I was wrong, Bunny,
The crow was real. The nest was real. We are real.”
“You can’t be here,” I said.

I took the poems about you into the backyard,
and put them into a pile on the grass.
My mother walked up behind me, smoking,
and handed me her matchbox.
“I read them,” she said.
I began to shake.
“I’ll do it if you can’t, baby,” my mother said softly.
I shook my head, lit a match, and dropped it onto the poems.