I hate starting poems with I, I say
inside my head.
While I understood her suggestion to flip
into first-person — it’s less distant,
less abstract, less … less —
I don’t want to go where she thinks
I do — hauling me from my spot
on the sofa, my hot toddy dashed
from my hand, my soft fleece snatched away,
and she’s stripped me of the crocheted sweater
that goes with everything
oh she’s cold —
and now I’m colder, and she’s right —
and she’s wrong —
this is the thing about our work, — it
will contain as much I as we jot
my guess is, you’d rather I not write
of myself — don’t we all prefer
to learn about the dog curled
by the fireplace, drink in that warm image,
than fill another’s eye with
so much me?
