What I claimed was upsetting
you didn’t give me any notice
though I would have been upset
whether you had told me an hour, a week, a month in advance
you said you were going to Judy Chicago
immediately I knew you were breaking away from me.
Was it for someone else?
Some romantic escapade?
Was it just to assert your sovereignty?
I was trying to rebut it but there wasn’t much time since you were leaving me
there was that time you bolted
to unsuccessfully seek out your dying analyst
and the time you got off your meds only telling me after the fact
and I found you wandering along the beach.
It was becoming more dangerous because of the controversy but we don’t traffic in reality we have never been
political creatures
yes all this was happening but we are not part of things
no wonder we complain about feeling isolated.
I don’t know if it was after kids or long after when you talked about fearing life ending
I’m not doing anything but traveling in a bubble between
here and there
getting off at the exit and taking the connector
past Wendy’s, McDonald’s and the 7-Eleven then coming back the same way listening to
what’s going on in the world in the appropriately named Sirius satellite radio.
Picking up and going to Chicago
to say you’re going to take back your life
and live some other life since this one is ending and I’d better do something if I’m
ever going to
before it’s too late.
Don’t have to do
the same things
none of the boring routines I’m always deriding.
I’m terrified of being deserted and will do anything to have you come home as
soon as you get
Chicago out of your system.
Francis Levy is a Wainscott resident. “Chicago” is part of a recently completed poetry collection, “The Unavoidable Imminence of the Inexplicable.”