Under Fire [by Terence Winch]

Under Fire       

Stop looking at me.  I didn’t do anything
wrong.  I don’t know the words to the song.
That’s all.  I wandered around the mall
with my broken watch.  I had all my receipts.
But no one would take anything back.
I am stuck with the whole mess.  Saved
phone messages, archived email, notes
you wrote on your hand.  The hand you once
held out to me,  the bed where we once slept
together. The dirty underwear in the hamper.
I don’t know how I will get home.  I don’t
need you to tell me I’m an idiot.  I need you
to remember where I came from so I can get
back there and put out the fire and go to sleep.

—Terence Winch
from i.e.  anthology

from the archive; first printed 8/8/09

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

A stunning poem that feels so personal, honest, true -- and universal, too. "I wandered around the mall/with my broken watch." What a brilliant modern metaphor. I feel this sad, beautiful poem in my bones.

[Jack Skelley]

💜👍🏽

[Peter Kearney]

Terence, your wonderful poem reminds me of a prayer by Thomas Merton that has the words "I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me...Nor do I really know myself." He wrote this years before he fell deeply and passionately in love with Marge, a nurse who was taking care of him. Were he to write such thoughts again at that time, I wonder would his words be closer to your own, expressing his confusion in the vivid, real-life detail born of experience.