Even if I tell you, tell you plainly,
in the simplest
words,
You will not get
it.
Even if you tell it back to me in new
words you picked from the fruit-heavy branches of your word tree so that I
understand my own meaning as though you were giving it new to me
You will not
have it.
But it will sit
with you when you lie trembling in your sweat-soaked bed.
It will hold
your hand and lay a compress on your fevered head.
And when the fever breaks, many many years from now,
When my voice and name have been composted past shadow,
You will repeat
these words again (or others like them) like a prayer, slowly, to yourself
as you strain your thighs to the mattress edge
and shift your weight
and stand up shaking on the cold hard floor.
Then you'll have it;
you’ll have got it, you will know.
