My muse

Readers make the writer.

 

Know Your Audience

I write for me.

That’s what they want you to say.

They want to hear

your rage against a cold

clock-hearted world,

your defiant detachment that screams

I NEED YOU

in words that say otherwise.

I would say it’s for me that I write

one day in seven–

but the other six I’m thinking of you.

Your searching eyes that crinkle

at impossible corners

like they’re hiding a laugh, or maybe

a tear.

You, your hands that itch

along skin-smooth paper,

hungry to feel the words,

really feel them.

I think I must know you,

somehow,

across this infinitesimal space–

I must know you,

to see your face so clearly in these lines.