Endosymbiosis

It wasn’t him

but what he did

that lived on

inside me.

I had to

learn that.

I had to

cleave  action

from figure,

the verb  do

from the noun  doll.

I had to

imagine

the double ll

not as two walls

closing in,

two bodies

side by side

in a twin bed,

two mirrors

facing

each other,

two tally marks

for the first and second

time I was ...

but a road

through

Hell—this

near contraction

of  he and  will—

where the difference

punctuation makes

could be missed.