Read by the author.

 

I realized today that I will die
with work unfinished, and someone
will have to find it. I am determined
to be alone, so who knows who
will have to sift through it all—fragments
of pages of nothing, dumb e-mails.
Will it be a lover? I hate the word
lover, but one of my lovers loves
the word lover, and so I can’t escape
it even though it makes me feel
beloved. I have a type, and I always
find them. When they ask me to put my own
hand to my own throat, I don’t just listen,
I ask Are you left-handed or right? because
the first or second or third or fourth
time you fuck someone is never the best;
ecstasy takes practice. I want to say this,
but I don’t because it would put pressure
on this nothing. I will die, and someone
(not them) will have to make sense
of the unfinished books and juvenilia
and W-2s and archived Internet journals
and paper to-do lists (car inspection, playlist
for K——, digitize to-do list). I’ll die
because one day I was alive
and the next day I was alive with a little
cul-de-sac at the end of an artery
in my brain. The doctor is concerned.
You’re telling me, dude. He has knowledge,
wisdom, experience. But I have some,
too. He asks if I have questions, and I tell him
the trick to having your heart broken
is telling someone You are going to break
my heart because either you’re happy
to be wrong, or you’re right.