You wake from a dream and stare
into the blackness of the room.
The window behind your head is open.
A breeze, soft as hair, comes in
through the curtains and touches
your chest. You remember her hair.
A single strand was like the touch
of fire against your skin. Is there a way
to talk about this without seeming
absurd? Her face in the dream is hard,
as if she is wearing a mask. As if
the years of your life have been
pressed into the image of the face
that stares at you from across a table.
It is mid-afternoon and the sunlight
over the tables and the traffic
and the white awning that reminds
you of a great, solitary wing anointed
with oil, is heavy with a silence you wish
to touch, but always refuses you.
She watches her finger drawing
an invisible sign on the table cloth.
Everywhere you look are signs you
cannot read. It has always been
this way, from the waiter who shifts
his eyes away from yours, to the filthy river
that sang to you more than any prayer
you were forced to utter to a god you hated,
to your mother's screams and your father's
drunkenness. She lifts her eyes across
your forty two years to meet your gaze.
She is the river, the snow fields, the neon
in the rain. She is everything that has been
taken from you and never returned. You lie
in a room that she has never left and never will.