Apparently you act by tacit rules
that everyone has memorized but me,
as if you all attended secret schools
of age- and gender-based propriety.
A manly woman or a childish sage
can’t find examples of the adverse stroke
across the ripping undertow. That page
was torn and shriveled in the censor’s smoke.

I tried but masqueraded as a wife.
Attempting to be mated in my heart,
I spent a precious measure of my life
awaiting resolution. Now the part
of me that revels in the absence of a guide
reverberates hermetically inside.