For who knows how many years
(I’ve forgotten more than either one of us could ever remember)
we posed together, the First Lady and I.
The whole world watched us, eager to detect
that tiny hairline fracture that would prove
us nothing but the fakes we had always been
in their shrewd and calculating eyes.
They waited breathless for the signs of rupture
in our manicured disguise.
We worked on our smiles,
explored the subtle shifts that mirrors lent us in the crush
of their insistent bodies. Still they sought that unequivocal
unmasking that must precipitate our fall.
As years groaned on,
recognition grew between us
that we had trapped each other in appearances we couldn’t own.
.
I was sleeping when Central Casting finally called her.
They told her she had passed. She had successfully completed
her apprentice years. She left my life with a becoming dignity,
clad in robes of an injured wife, while she prepared herself
for her big break.
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Critiques
The first section
"For who knows how many years
(I’ve forgotten more than either one of us could ever remember)
we posed together, the First Lady and I."
This strikes me as a reference to a wife, or at the least a close lover or perhaps even another relative such as daughter. The first two lines seem to touch on the ethereal nature of memory, "I've forgotten more than...could ever remember", a psychologist once said that if we were to take an exam on etails of our own lives we would fail miserably, we can test this...go to an unfamiliar building anf stay for 2 or 3 minutes, when you leave try to remember, was the floor tiled? What kind of lighting did they have? What wal color did they have? We SEE aspects of our lives as experiential spctators, but we lose aspects of who we are at the same time through selecting what we remember. And what do we remember? What we focus on, the things WE choose to be important. So is this a lament for those lost details within the lives of the writer and the subject, a goal to retrieve those moments that had faded away over time?
The second stanza switches from a first to second person perspective, it conveys almost a sense of paranoia in that loss of who we are and the Schadenfreud we experience from those we love...they "watch" (it almost seems like with baited breath the way it's painted) for these twoto break, the crack...to show the fragility they lack all others wish they could acquire. The stability of a special love.
And lastly the tragic downfall, the lovers or the familial partners feel so strongly for each other they've BECOME the masks they felt needed to hold those around them at bay. But in a sense, isn't this a form of truly ultimate love? What more could be said after understanding "I will change who I am for you, I will hide myself to make the reality of being with you here, now something holy and special".
The last bit I'm unsure of, it seems personal...perhaps this liason was built around a situational place? Someone in town who'd performing a job and must now leave this "place" behind?
Besides the last stanza, I can really connect with this piece, it offers a sense of strength in the face of adversity as I'm reading it, and even though (presumably) it goes awry in the end, the sanctity of those moments are eternal. Absolutely stunning piece.
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As a side, this is MY interpretation of the piece, as in all others I could be completely wrong as to what he intended, Im' simply describing what I got from it. Keep it up.
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