Tell Me Your Story So I Can Make It Mine

If a person hears a story
from someone who, say, was just talking
and then tells that story to others
I’m wondering who owns the story

If the story is about being afraid, so afraid
that one sits terrified, looking out the window
for a car that might drive up in the dark,
does the fear become the teller’s in the telling

At lunch, the man tells me his story
his gone wife, their nameless children, all angry
mistakes, what his name used to be, grief
which I pack in a bag with a sandwich to take home

His words stick, thick rubber bands in a drawer,
wound around each other to be picked apart
and set on the table, the gist refigured, reconjured,
stitched together for my telling to you