I should tell you that I sometimes get my latitudes
and longitudes mixed up. And also my apogees
and perigees. My stalactites and stalagmites sometimes 
run together, not unlike my wants and my needs—
the wants drooling down, the needs piling up until 
they form a kind of column, a shape like an hourglass
or a woman. My apologies in advance. I always forget
if bimonthly means twice a month or once every other.
And I can never remember the difference between
an iceberg and a glacier. Or what desultory means.
Or even how to pronounce it. I have these gaps, these
interstices. I have these spaces, these lapses and in-
continences. Plus my Arctic and my Antarctic 
are hopelessly enmeshed. They’re like totally mush.

Yesterday my knee hurt and today my stomach hurts
and amazingly my knee has stopped hurting
but my stomach is killing me. My head feels like a
hundred mediocre love poems with throbbing feet
up on a table in my head. And now my foot hurts
too. I think it’s all referred pain from my heart
which hurts more than anything since this morning
I told you I don’t love you. I only feel sorry for you.
As if love weren’t a great pity. But now I know
the hurt in your eyes is radiating out to my heart
and making me sick with—radiation. The whole house
is contaminated. I know now if I stay here it will kill me.
Pity I didn’t know all this till this morning. My heart
pricks. But my knee feels like a million bucks.