No one remembers you at the party.
You’ve made yourself too small.
Not small as in a miniature dachshund or
a tea rose but small as in constrained.
Without warning, your mind goes blank.
When you speak, your words,
if remembered at all, are attributed
to someone else. If you drop your glass,
people ask afterward, who was that person
who dropped her glass?
It takes skill to vanish your one hundred
and thirty pounds of self into thin air—
a stillness, a downward gaze,
a traffic cop-like dexterity for moving
out of the way, a throwing back of attention
from whence it came
much as ventriloquists throw voices.
You have no switch to turn your skill on
when you need it, off when you don’t.
It is stamped onto your psyche,
which makes things difficult when
your need for safety lifts, which it did,
long ago
so long ago
you wonder now if you made the man up,
if your mother was right,
if the eyes that pierced you were your own eyes
turned inward, if the whisper in your ear
was your own blood coursing
through your veins, if the oily scent
that hung over your bed
was from your own unwashed body,
if the weight on your chest
was the breath that you held
and hold still.
