You made me crude
because you were afraid
and too easily in awe—

but I also loved that
about you, the sincerity
of your love, the centrality

of your worry.
Had I intervened
to privilege one

over the other,
it would have been all
you remembered.

All you thought about,
that entrance.
Even as it was,

you said I visited,
but those divas and reformers
weren’t me—

they spoke for me
only in the literal sense
in which every radius

of a wheel is tempted
to believe that it,
in its rigidity,

alone was chosen
to support the whole
miracle of motion.

In fact, I cast no spells
and called no witnesses.
I let you find your own.

I let you discover that
those growing pains
are the thing you are.