The Pearl

You were seen once, in a dim light.
Two hands held your face and then two blue eyes

met yours, you could see them in the act of looking
and then you saw them see at the same time you felt it,

that you were being seen
and not until this happened did you know

this was something you required and also
that each of you had become a stranger.

Then you understood why animals take looking
as a sign of aggression. Two pairs of eyes

struggled against each other. And also the stranger's hand
behind your ear, but no memory of the back of the earring

sliding off, just of your own eyes
exhausting themselves in a looking back

you could almost translate, if you could say simultaneously
I am starving and I am not afraid of you.

There was nothing like agreement. It might even have been a war.
The eyes did not relent, not until dawn arrived

and you were alone again, when you began to imagine
sleep was the stranger returning

and only then allowed its delicious possession
to overtake you. It cost one pearl.