“Oblique”
I feel you in an oblique way
but still it hurts, or at least I remember that it hurt me once
yes, that’s how I feel you,
in an oblique way, intentionally, perhaps on your part
not like a ray of penetrating sunlight that used to
look for me through the curtains,
but a single weak ray you’d recognize
only by the dust that settles gently upon its line of
light
stretched the length of the room, and ending
in the middle of the floor
still it seems to me a wonder that
this slight strand of light so fine and oblique
originating thousands of years ago to here, where I am,
could be that strong to
carry your longing from so far away;
but no—I am deceived, for it is in truth
my own longing plated in the dust of the forgotten,
pressed into your forced thoughts of me, so cold and oblique.
You make me feel you, of this I am certain, just as before
to feel you the way I smell a perfume I never wear anymore
whose essence bursts suddenly from behind my ear
that my breast fills without wanting
until I can scarcely breathe, until I
know nothing of anyone, anything except that I should feel you in such
an oblique way.