The Solitudes of August - VII

I am the Imposter's biggest fan, so big he followed me
through music camp and graduate school, past two or three
failed marriages, ruined children, dopplegangers to swat away like flies...
and when the voice milks the words "highly paid solicitors,"
the feeling, from as far away as galaxies,
comes tumbling out of my own skull - the flowers are revealed
to have petals with their thorns - the pulse of my own blood warms...

I am but one in 50 million,
like any familiar stranger
- we all have the face of a Hollywood star
to make what we look like into what we are,
to remind us, like the irises on the table,
of something ineffable in one human
who can speak our truth as fiction,
to tame life like chrysanthemums, into a melody
to shop by, of words honed to only imply the violation
in all that the wounded said, to articulate
the dissociation, to burn the kindling from the dead...

Disasters require mourning - the sunflower leans -
we discover in our shame our glory.