As my hand makes the first blind motion
in late morning, hers rises up to put out the light.
In sleep her body feels similar hunger pangs,
Becomes bored with someone else’s dreams.
When she wakes we walk the same distances,
To and from a supermarket, a train car,
An unfamiliar apartment.
My eye fixes on something in air or rain,
Or my mouth fixes itself on another:
Her movements follow the same lingering angles, arcs.
We both cross streets, struck by thoughts
Suddenly not our own, stilled —
We blame the other for daily failures,
unexplained vices, for not desiring hard enough.
When finally we set out, angry and eager,
To encounter the other, our feet elude
The same path, and cross opposite oceans.
Tiredly night chases morning across her eyelids.
I breathe slowly in bed and disappear
into another unknown sequence.
mabel lee 