Shame is the best way to start: the moment of injury

or the moment after—a synapse—the blood’s path

making itself just for me and the world, a highway

doubling back for the living, aerial view, the sky

dizzying as ever, my pain nomadic, thinly clothed

and wandering.  I had to arrive where I first ended,

creep back to the body, hover into a high branch

and nest.  Are you troubled?  I blink back to July

on a porch, our porch, and you speak in past tense,

my body caught in so many blackout afternoons,

a version of me you struggle to hold onto, but

you do not say we, only then or you were drunk,

like I remember how it feels.

–Erin Veith; from I Closed My Eyes To Tell That Story
   (Latham House Press, 2014)