The Story I Keep Getting Shorter

He said it would settle.

The line that blurred during healing,

the edge that went soft — he said

the skin just does that.

Eleven years and it has settled, all right.

Settled into a story I've told

so many times I can hear myself

delivering it — the pause in the same place,

the same two sentences,

the nod from whoever asked.

Today someone asked in a meeting.

In front of three people.

I said the thing I say.

It came out clean, practiced,

and completely wrong.

Not wrong like a lie.

Wrong like a photograph of a room

you no longer live in

but can still describe from memory.

The faded edge is what I love now.

The blurred line.

The place where it stopped being

exactly what I meant

and became just

mine.