If I’m to live without you, let it be hard and bloody,
cold soup, broken shoes, or in the midst of
opulence
let the dry branch of a cough jerk through me, barking
your twisted name, the foaming vowels, and let the
bedsheets
stick to my fingers, and nothing give me peace.
I won’t learn to love you any better this way,
but abandoned by happiness
I’ll know how much you gave me just by sometimes being
around.
I think I understand this, but I’m kidding myself:
there’ll need to be frost on the lintel
so the one taking shelter in the vestibule feels
the light in the dining room, the milky tablecloths, and the
smell
of bread passing its brown hand through the crack.

As far apart from you
as one eye from the other,
out of this affliction I’ve taken on
will be born the gaze that deserves you at last.