and if the door’s ajar, I’d break the jar and write it on each shard

These lines write themselves. I push away
from the shapes they make. They want to say
what I don’t want. The more I race—erase—
to try to get away, the more I face

backward. Read me, you who have let go
the need to nail down some truth in the past,
and take me with you. Cupid doesn’t know
the trouble I’ve seen, doesn’t know the cost.

It’s not about lost love; hate doesn’t learn
how not to burn, and he will not get lost.
If there’s no god to make my case to, why
do I keep trying, keep framing the I —

the irony? Away and back I swerve
to irony, God Irony, I serve
my cup of rage—and if you serve me right,
to you I’d give my word, my words, I’d write

and write the moon back in the sky, that gold
companionable face (since to reflect
is to be patient and benevolent, to hold
one’s judgment in abeyance, recollect

what haste and hate might poison and destroy
and so think twice), or else I’d write away
all stars and planets, empty out the sky
of anything but free air. God Irony.

I’d write your clean, sweet name on every door,
and if the door’s alarmed I’d write it twice,
and if the door’s ajar, I’d break the jar
and write it on each shard, on the black ice

sheeting the highway, on the winter sky,
and everywhere would read: God I, God I.

[Jennifer Clarvoe 'Back Again' from Counter-Amores]