Mostly Married, Alone at Night

You'd better believe that if I hadn't already tied the knot    on these sweatpants I'd be out there in the mad brick city        painting my lips the only red my complexion will allow,    maybe with some heels on, I could probably find some heelsor at least borrow some, well first make some friends    in this city that shuts itself to me like a fist and ask        the tall ones if what they wear is approximately my size,    and then what could possibly be in my way? Besidessweatpants of course and also how when I open the door    I am not outside under the trees throwing down leaves        like grief-soaked handkerchiefs but am instead    inside the house again, to be clear not the house where Istay which is not the house where I live but cannot    be, no instead the house I have made of bricks hewn        from nostalgia mines bound solid by the mortar    of selfish aspiration, and since it is a house made entirely fromthe past and the future I can't stay there either.    It's hard to get ready for a night out with strangers/future friends        when you can't find lipstick or how to maintain a consistent    presence in this dimension. Say I find the shade I need—suddenly my lips are gone and who knows when they'll come back.    When have my lips ever done what they should? For all I know        they're out there now, surveying skin, working their way    across some tattooed frontier and, since they're white,claiming and renaming what they find. I wish better    from them, and though ashamed will take the blame        for what they clamp and suck, for the whiskey and head,    the lies that were truth at the time.