She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today. Now the fish has been cooked, and she is alone with it. 

Never before such a distant season of derision. 
Across town, the silo siren heralds an encore to panic. 

I will not, though I would, resolve,
As the New Year’s Eve comes on,
To do, not do, review, revolve

Corridors of the city
End in a deer’s eye.
The deer stumbles among legs

You bend into me, low
as a fountain’s stump of water,

It’s okay, I wanted to tell her. It scares me, too.
But I was already plummeting, tumbling in free fall

What does it mean? I lie awake;
My mind needs rest, my bones all ache:
So needy and so loath to take?

    People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man.

I escaped, spinning off
   to heaven knows what
         location, eluding

I see now I was 50 percent to blame.
That’s right. And, because I value fairness,
I’ll apologize for leaving you
alone with my dad that time we sprang him from Bellevue