Self - Portrait Backwards

She said, "It just seems strange

To do everything except the things you say that you want to do

I'm not trying to sound mean

If that's what you want

That's what you want

Do you still want things?"

I drew myself backwards at night in our room

Started with the parts of the day reversed

First this afternoon

Man in sunlight doing dishes

We were both pretty high that night

The TV played a show again we'd already seen

She was on the floor peeling an orange

I felt along a crack down in the back of my teeth

Is it a new one?

Are you still having fun?

Are you feeling fulfilled?

I don't mean to sound harsh

Do you know who you are?

I drew myself backwards at night in our room

Further to the past by the week as I went

Five or six ago

Self-portrait holding dental bill

Pin them all on the wall

In the garden I didn't plant, April

Unknown figure silhouetted by phone screen light, last fall

Color study, black and blue, age thirty-two

Abstractions, me and you, on-going series

On the highway at night, at twenty-nine

Still life with red wine and vicodin, 2013

Smiling kid with stitched face, age eleven

Color study, shades of white, 1987

Exhibition, "Work in Progress Incomplete"

And you get to the end of, what, fifteen seasons of something?

Since it always seems like too much work to find something new to watch, you just start it over again

And 'cause it's changed so much over time, it feels like a different show going all the way back

And how could you have not noticed?

But you watch through again and it starts to make sense how

Because all the things that did were so small, so gradual

You never realized it was changing