What I Never Wrote

was how you begged me to keep it. 
But you were never home, and I was
but did not want to be. And by then
you had become a man smaller than a man. 
So I thought it away. Closed my eyes one night
and dreamt it out of me. And the next day,
you knocked on the bathroom door. 
And you charged in and I stood and pointed. 
I said, Look at that
And you asked, Is that
And I said, Yes.
And you said, Oh,
and then you shaved off your beard. 

Copyright Credit: Rachel McKibbens, "What I Never Wrote" from Into the Dark & Emptying Field. Copyright © 2013 by Rachel McKibbens.  Reprinted by permission of Rachel McKibbens.
Source: Into the Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press, 2013)