|
We let playful waves
Lap over us happily,
Hungrily, carelessly.
The tide, we thought,
Can do us no harm.
We said to ourselves:
It will only clean us
And smooth out
All those rough edges:
We’ll seem presentable
For once in our lives.
So the lukewarm water
Flowed between us
Soothing the sense
Of solitude and regret.
And it stripped us naked
Of our fierce needs
Of that mutual hunger
Which had been,
As we noticed later,
Our last self-defense.
Water came between us
Polishing our feelings
Into some unrecognizable
Form of politeness:
Strangers in this house.
We touch, we coexist
As an irreversible distance
Preserves and perfects
The erosion of feelings
We used to call love.
|