She's Not Me

She lives in the margins of my name,

refreshing a page like a prayer she doesn’t believe in.

Younger, yes;

but youth is not the same as new,

and envy ages faster than skin.

She scrolls through my life with borrowed breath,

counts my sentences like rosary beads,

mistakes my silence for invitation,

my work for confession.

Every poem, she thinks, is a mirror.

It never occurs to her

that some rooms are not built for her reflection.

She dates my past the way one tries on a coat

still warm from another body.

Calls it fate.

Calls it winning.

Doesn’t notice how it hangs wrong on her shoulders,

how history does not change allegiance

just because she’s loud about wanting it.

She reads my books like evidence,

highlighter trembling in her hand;

See? This line. This ache. This fire.

It must be me.

As if art were that small.

As if I would shrink myself

to fit inside her need.

What competition can exist

between a woman becoming

and a woman circling?

Between creation

and surveillance?

I am busy with my life;

its depth, its weight, its earned calm.

She is busy counting my steps,

measuring herself against a shadow

that keeps growing

the less I look back.

Obsession is not intimacy.

Jealousy is not desire.

And watching someone live

is not the same as being alive.

I do not need to defeat her.

She is already exhausted

from trying to be me.