the secret of my prolificity

“You’ve been writing a lot
of poems lately,”
he says to me. “Yeah,” comes my
suspicious reply.
“Are they all about
the same person?”
“No,” I say, and give a harmless example
of one I wrote recently
to a different ex on the subject of
the dissolution of his marriage.
(nothing nostalgic
or lovelorn vis-a-vis him, per se,
just advice I wish
someone had given me
before I wasted nine years of my life
on yet another man.)

but.
the question he’s really asking
is whether there’s someone new
in my life who has
inspired me. I dare not say
the bald and/or naked truth,
which is that there is,
because it’s you and I
have no right to claim inspiration
where love does not dare
to speak its name.

I’d far rather pretend
that this sudden burst
of creativity has nothing to do
with you, just like you will
have nothing to do –
at least in any romantic context –
with me.