Why must you pace like that? You’ll wreck the place
and I won’t clean it this time. You’ll have to.
This is the ghost then, which we always joked
in bed would come to haunt one of us. You—
you haven’t really got it all together
and seem to have fallen into a deep funk
between the Coleridge and the china.
When I left here you said you had a plan,
you’d reached a new conception of your work,
but it’s amazing how things never change.
The furniture is still where I arranged it.
I see us squirming in that one small room,
you working just as when I last rolled over.
Why is it we could never get along?
You always said you’d change if I would change.
But nothing has changed. Does the island change?
Stop pulling faces. Quit your carrying on
like Lon Chaney Sr. or John Barrymore—
wanting your orange juice served to you just so
or quiet while you look over the mail.
Granted you loved me more than anyone.