The Abandonment.

Schweig, Sarah V.

    A man I once loved has now built a mountain.
   You're avoiding something,
 I said when I'd climbed to its crest.
   That's a projection,
 he said, repairing the thatched roof on his
      modest hut.
   You're projecting that I'm projecting,
 I said, because your
     parents were psychoanalysts.
   I sat down in the plastic grass, which he'd woven leaf by leaf
into the
     turf.
   You're using description of a moment to avoid what's really
at
     hand,
 he said.
   But I live for my art,
 I said. I don't have anything else.
     You had me once,
 he said, and you still said that.
   When I ask if he would like to go swim in the Lake of Remembrance,
   he says, Don't change the subject.
 When I ask what I can do to
     help, he says,
   Here is a shovel.
 When I ask what to do with the shovel he says,
     Start digging.
   The mountain never brought him happiness. The mountain never brought
     him peace.
   Now we will bury the ash of our teachers,
 he said. On this
      we could agree.