This rain alone could wash my name from the book.
I must have forgotten the turn I took to come here.
Maybe it was warm when I was born.
I know the stars were shining at the time.
Every step I’ve taken, I’ve let something shed.
Opening my birth certificate, I watch
the words slip off into the grass.
This is the most confused I’ve ever seen us.
Wondering so much about each other.
I am learning how not to lie.
Wondering what you wanted, where it is
you come from, and why you’re making waves.
I admit it’s not for me know.
I made a louche confession.
The teeth chattering softly after.
Of all the things that have passed my lips,
how little I would not retract.
Worst is knowing where we are.
It would be better losing proximity,
living with a bit of anonymity.
Or to take another’s name.
The moment holds a globe in its wet hands.
Not wet from rain or even tears.
It’s a water that’s always been here.
It’s like being born in the tub where you drowned.
Benjamin Goodman is a poet, counselor, and educator residing in the Hudson Valley.
He regularly offer poetry classes in the Hudson Valley, at Princeton University, and online. His work appears in publications such as Strange Matters Magazine, North of Oxford, Wildscape Lit, Grub Street, Vassar Review, and Berkeley Poetry Review.