I’ll Never Get to Say

and you implicated in the dismantled pillow sham,
the bedroom prefertile and still, I almost spoke,
interrupted by a gust of air; the window slammed
shut. Wyeth’s Christina leaned in with that wind;
she pushed forward on the canvas one useless last time.

I threw in and folded; the last of the last. Time
was set on the longest cycle. It was not me,
but you who spoke first; the sheets began to unwind.
It wasn’t your voice I heard, but some sham
version; your voice spoken to a stranger, slammed
repeatedly clean against me and shaken. I spoke