Marginalia

Never ignore the footnotes is a line

I love well. He always read them

last, I did as the author told, 

my heart fluttering at the sight

of the tiny numerics linked by almost

visible threads to the definitives at the bottom. 
The almost, I often went beyond:

presumptive and co-author, 

admiring critic, worshipping student--I wrote

on the margins as if 

I had the right to those spaces. 

I underlined, put checkmarks and crosses,

insisting while he shook

his head at my dog ears, clicking

his mute, disdaining tongue 

at my clumsy scribbles:

This is foreshadowed by the preceding stanzas;

still, it is jolting enough.

I tore the page and hid

it in a box.

This footnote says:

Adjective. amoureux (feminine singular amoureuse, masculine plural amoureux, feminine plural amoureuses). 

we are subject and reader

I show you the words and you nod

at the childhood I have let you into,

the years I had written after the brackets

dividing time into epochs, an epic of a life:

a tiny ballerina twirling under friendly lights;

the singing child, singing her way to adulthood;

a girl with eyes that stared, wistful, at the moon;

the disillusioned grown-up, gathering her losses;

the woman who lived, the woman

who lives. 

You read the page--footnote, 

marginalia, pointing at the brackets--

you can write more here,

and I jot down:

You are  my

stream of consciousness.