Trace now the contour of her shape.
Note its invisbility but make no attempt to deny
its evidentiary effect on your experience or "reality."

Take note first of the way you obtained what you saw
as necessary to fulfill your duty, cover your tracks and provide—
and how you thought nothing of taking everything from her.

With that established and the knowing that she always knew
and still she gave only love to you, though hated all you chose
to do and the many ways it left so many lives in ruin...

Turn now to the hotel room: in the madness, some momentary
reconsideration, inexplicable intervention, a recognition—
or the night before last for that matter... perhaps that is easier?

Shall we return to the lakeshore of your youth? Or venture
further to you wading through dark waters in search of your sword
before you charmed the snake and so many others?

A million moments swirling in a multiplying mind, but then:
the butterfly and how she caught the coattails of your heart
and then all that opened up because and how you shut it down.

Or did you know how she, the advocate, argued on your behalf,
all while being halved by a pompous pauper set upon some
worldly throne and that never wavered in all the years alone?

How she sent many gifts to the one you stated, irrefutably,
to be the owner of your lonely heart and turned aside
from all the arrows and never spoke a word against?

So as you sit there spinning, questioning the validity
and the viability of one who has offered only life or try to justify
the way you saw her through clouds of confusion you consumed
so willingly, like mashed potatoes served up scrumptuously,

Would you check in again with your heart and how it fell apart—
but wait do you not remember who sat with you in the dark
when your foot slipped upon the stair? Do you see where

She seemed to be in two places at once but never apart
from the truth and the life as she walked upon her way?
How many times had she been burned upon some stake

Or left for dead or torn to pieces in one room or another
from which she had been excluded? So make your proposition
or do not, but surely you must abide by your rubric of irrevocability.

Surely you see clearly your mind's infallibility in this case
and if so must erase nothing from the record and stand clean
before your God and all you say you stand for and see:

This body broken and also her spirit undeterred—and love: alive!
And life that cannot be extinguished and will not defy its right
to be in formation and ever in alignment with what remains and

Whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure
and lovely and commendable, what is honest and just.
Dwell now upon these things. Remember now what is true .