Half-Remembered Margins

For Sami, whom I studied abroad with in Cambridge, England.


.

You and I

have both been 
at separate times

the same being—


have been both

the metaphor

and scientific name
 for a flower

.

so

without order
 we flow

.

the wanderer
and the wounded heart

.

to meet
one who is

who once you were

—an old cliché

.

to find a novel in a passport

.

and embrace

what one will be

.

a brief episode after the flight
back and

season’s end

an after image
on a black screen

.

to fall loosely
 through time

.

for half to become one
and one to be halved
so too

are we


untied from the phone


a pair of swans
ferrying broken necks 
across the pond

.

and your

ballerina

slippers

bloodied

again

.

are you still living

with death inside

you?

.

do you ever think

about my death

inside you?

.

2015