Choose your undoing, Ellie Sawatzky urges.

James Bowden

Perhaps a goat chews your corset strings loose. Oh no! I’ve a normal-sized tummy!
I, the goat, rather than the corset-wearer: you, the delicate balance between
love of another and love of self and love of self because an other whom
I love loves that self and all this love just circular and
supported by no haunches other than my own–
I used to dream that you would talk to me.
I used to conflate Dermot Kennedy lines
with what we’d had and could have had.
Step back, love: this is my popcorn chicken.
This is my heart beating out of my chest, my rainy
morning and my favorite poems. After this long winter of
your silence, I am falling for a new version of my self, one who
struggles to catch his breath whenever the cute blonde girl he’s falling for
utters that smooth, low, musical note in her register that probably no one else
notices. Whenever she smiles sunshine and reminds me of the child-like playfulness
I left with you in the aftermath. I listened to Joji’s Glimpse of Us, several times, like you’d
have wanted me to, and for the first time, didn’t feel that familiar tightening of the chest. The
only tightening, hope. The only solidity, me and mine. I don’t believe that we ever choose our undoing,
more an inability to unchoose. As if I could have not chosen you. As if I would not choose her. Come, darling.

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A good amount of sacrilege here. Notice the switch in the you occurring at the very last line. Not sure if this reflects real life, but thought it a nice concept.