it's something, to get and be gotten

Sometimes, late at night, when the sirens
from the police station a block away
begin their incessant crooning,

I think they might be coming for me,
have found a way inside my head--
for there are those who I would trade

to have you back among the living,
people I know and talk to often,
whose stories of gloom and doom

keep me on the phone night after night
while I sit on the porch by candlelight,
the way I used to listen to your stories,

though I never had murderous thoughts
about you, my friend, because even
in the darkest talks your twisted humor

poked through, snapped us out of ourselves,
and it's something, to get and be gotten
in so few words, the way Dickinson

in so few words could say,
"One sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away."

I always thought of you as the one
a hedge away, but now I think that maybe
you're the one left in the house

and I'm in the bushes, keeping watch,
feloniously thinking, the one
they'll eventually come for,

and I would go willingly
if it meant you got to stay in the house
a little longer.

[Teresa Leo 'Confession' from Bloom in Reverse]