reading Foucault while making spaghetti

reading Foucault while making spaghetti

i stand beside the stove

reading from The Foucault Reader

and glance into the pot boiling

the spaghetti dancing tendrils

like some sea creature against the current

and i think of you

although that isn’t true

every time i say it

any time i say it

i think of how you have come to be

a mirror for me to see the me

who failed you like a historical marker

and i pull up recollections

recreations of me kissing you:

that’s true but with a revision

recreations of you kissing me

this story of my past unhinged

and clapping against the wall

Foucault’s bespectacled cover photograph

is not Foucault anymore than his words

as you in my memory are no longer you

and i am not the lines and stanzas here

or the person who failed in loving you

and is left only with the history of us

i am he trapped here in the octopus arms

of wishing you’d return to me in these ashes

blossoming like pinot noir grapes for wine