Otherness

There is a piece

of you

.

in me. Every time

You were there

to fan the flames.

.

Pick through ash.

.

Hands covered

moving pieces

of rubble, searching

.

for living parts

of the self,

.

when you burned

the flesh.

.

Shattered pieces

of what belonged

to us, to me.

.

I feel you inside.

.

I feel your absence.

I feel your self-focus.

I feel your lack of forgiveness.

I feel your lack of atonement.

.

I wonder, was this real?

This feeling of thereness.

I was never aware,

.

of the dreamscape I bought into,

dipped my years into

.

this belief, baptismal

.

water of my own

self absorption.

.

A part of you is me.

.

It will be this way now.

It will be this way tomorrow.

.

In some sense,

it was always so.

.

Because all moments

bleed into this moment,

.

time split

on the knife edge,

.

walking a borderline

between here and nowhere

halfway close to nothing

almost on the otherside

.

of tomorrow but right

before yesterday

and always out of reach

.

In some sense you were never