Adorno’s Rose
            Caroline Chavatel 




I’ve only fixed the faucet, the leaking:
spicket, mouth, body. It has been quite

                            some time, it has been quiet, strange
                            to eye your books careful not to smudge

your penciled bits in the margins.
Truth usually in the margins,

                             I focus on the text, Sartre.
                             I am afraid to be smudged, afraid

of smudging, fearing I’ll long for
something, and when I can’t

                             I will have to admit I was
                             liable. I don’t want to collect

the cigarette butts from the lawn.
They smell like you, or the essence, no,

                             existence of you smelled like them, but I
                             have yet to mow the lawn, the growing:

man, woman, knowledge of man
and woman. I’ll never be sure

                            of how. I shelf for you,
                            nail pieces of wood, call myself love,

but I am not real—I owe

                            my existence to the mind of a man. I have
                            built you a library ladder and I
                            desire to stop desiring so goddamn

much. You didn’t come back.
I built you, cure me. I used
to know, when I moved, if I was

                          closer or farther from you, even
                          if you weren’t there. Now,
                          I don’t know if I am, left alone

without excuse.