Maybe we never know each other in the end,
never see past the bright reflecting surface of things,
the innumerable masks we slip into as easily as
More than once you told me that I was
inscrutable, even after all those years of breathing
the same air, sharing the same silence
and secrets, dreaming between the same four walls.
But I misread you too, love, thought you were
stronger than you were, never knowing
how precarious your balance was on that ledge
between the most ordinary of days
and your own private oblivion. Forgive me
for thinking your stubbornness was only a virtue,
that the well you drew from would be enough
to keep you alive, no matter what lies your
tireless and wayward mind may have fed you.
I imagined you old, the grand dame of the avenue,
wheeling your rickety shopping cart back home
from the co-op, raising your skinny arms
in indignation at the cars and buses who refused
to stop and acknowledge your status.
Maybe we are merely strangers at the end
of it all, no better or worse than when we began;
though I wish you were here to tell me
how wrong I am, how foolish, that we knew each other
as well as two people could, and that if we met
again, every year between and behind us forgotten,
we would want to know each other
as we had before, shy with our first glances,
circling, searching for just the right word,
the right moment, the right door to open, to enter
this life all over again.
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