Witness

With the warm, weird spring rain
I misted & fogged the smoking porch

at the first bar I drank at during my first
Buffalo fall; I planned to leave earlier,

from this city, this party. The gorgeous woman
whose name should have been mine

keeps hugging me like a sister. The rain
spritzes the hairs at her temple till they curl, &

she says if before I remember. She throws
knowing looks. I wasn’t there to know, but I’ve heard

so much it’s become like I’m collecting your survivors
around me, once again the lone woman-body

pouring stories of some violent boy’s destruction
down its pretty, chokable throat. She calls me she

& this is one of the occasions I’m not bothered.
I can swallow stories of you, what you’d hate

or the way you could choreograph a room
to separate people who shouldn’t cross paths,

conspiracy implied by the sound of your name
in the mouth of every person I meet

who loved & never found a way to lose you
when you left. Your wickedness not incompatible

with how big you are missed, so I can love you
without complication because I haven’t felt

the path of your wreckage through me, only
the moments you alight on my shoulder

to witness. We’d have been brothers,
you & I, tearing down hearts.

c m taylor is a poet, mover, & musician, kind of from many places but currently residing in buffalo, new york with their spouse and three cats. their debut poetry chapbook Yes & Yes &, a celebration of queer love & sex, is forthcoming from Knight's Library. they're on twitter @carma_t.