Aftermath

I thought I understood the sculpture
in the small boutique museum
that invited me to thumb a piece of paper
off an oversized memo pad
and carry it away, but then I was responsible
for that blank square of white, and in public.
There were no posted guidelines about recycling
or folding it to carry it around incognito,
and I felt like I was breaking the rules
unless I held it in front of me, uncreased,
like a sandwich board
advertising limbo, or white noise.
This was just another convenient symbol
for my existential dilemma—
how to appropriately dispose of conceptual art
I had unwittingly committed to:
my most intimate relationship to date.
Even if my half-live was volatile,
I wanted it to be a thousand years long.
Instead I discovered the laws
of tensile strength and lines of fracture
by taking everything delicate in my life
and making sure it broke.
Because then I was wreckage
surrounded by wreckage.
Then I was home.