Other People’s Words (v.1).

That semester when we shared textbooks
I learned you better than I had in over
a year of breakfasts, lunches, dinners
together, forced ends to awkward silences.
“How are you?”  All those times I asked,
you answered best in other people’s words.
Raymond Carver:  Don’t complain, don’t explain.
I don’t have to be drunk to say what I think.

Another time:  I spent my whole life
looking for anything I recognized.

A braver friend would have underlined
herself, an offering returned.  Plenty
of places I wanted but none where I was
supposed to be.  Sherman Alexie.
Or Grace Paley:  I wanted the world
to explain itself to me.

Maybe it’s always difficult,
in someone else’s language, to be brave.