Facts About Neuroplasticity

It says so on Google. I type in Heather wants

and it tells me this is it. It must be the reason my dreams always end

with his funeral (the one I didn’t attend) and why I pull the covers

over my ears so I can’t hear the memory of him saying, “If I were her,

I’d be just like her,” as he tosses a pillow past me to his office couch.

As he steals the air from his office fan for his own beard. As he jokes

about Britney Spears and modesty, as he throws around

the rubber chicken. As he says he is “the midwife to my ideas,

but [I] have to get [myself] pregnant.”

 

Heather wants a great orgasm story – or any great

story, Heather wants to grab his booty!, Heather

wants to solve poverty through better design, Heather wants

a fairy tale ending. This is why I can’t read

that email with the final poem he wrote before he died.

This is why the poem is stiff in my Inbox like the carcass of a crow.

It’s called “Open Heart,” written just before his closed.

I can’t read it until I am done with my PhD. Maybe until I have tenure.

I can’t read it because it probably doesn’t remember me.

 

Heather wants your man. Heather wants cake.

Heather wants you to succeed and she wants to help!

Heather lies in bed and reads crumpled papers

filled with old poems, each signed to her with a note. She traces

the words with wide eyes, seeing symbols in the torn corners

and smudged ink. There are clues in the way an “L” is shaped.

When Heather closes the bathroom mirror, she expects him to pop up

behind her and yell, “Funny joke, huh?!” Heather wants answers

about almond butter.