JANE MILLER
What do I see? The lightless past.
It’s talk. It kept us going
between lovemaking. And while I was not you
I discovered how truly fascinating you were,
bleaching your hair and removing your underwear
for me as much as for you, gestures I took
seriously all the way back to their beginnings
in parody and on TV. But
after we went all that way I found a heart
on a stick, hopping among the fresh desert
sage, and even then it was great
to be alone. Somewhere between the middle
and the end of our long talk we ended
up inside, touched but never seen
which we must have had trouble believing in,
tender as it was, otherworldly, like an idea
finally devoid of meaning, the pure feeling
of coming outdoors, finding no one watching,
nothing moving in the steady wind.
The rest of the time I felt was always
a premonition of my first night alone,
the phantom hotel of my forties,
this helpless country. If ever I was ready
to live a life, by evening
what have I done? I hurt you, all over
nothing, a trifle, as things go. Noise
on the brain, habitually tooled
to the point it drove us practically
insane, and we had to notice, I suppose,
that inside this world
is another more—it must have to do
with our placement—full of people
with questions rather than choices.
There I found you experience
through your heart and soul—very noble—
while I experience through my nights and days,
a vague union—maybe it’ll save me,
maybe it’s a waste—