I’m almost afraid to see you because
when you’re not made of imagination,
you’re not mine anymore
and you have in your hands
everything I thought I knew,
with your divine, disconcerting unpredictability
knocking me off balance in your glance.
But you’re better like this, real,
the little threads of gray lacing your hair,
the unselfconsciousness in your walk –
you’ve always been as sure of yourself as water.
I get torn apart
in the singular grace of your smile,
in the way you’re not looking at me.
You fill me up with little tingly stars
(you always fill people up. It’s your way)
and then leave me flat, still hungry, breathless,
wandering in this courteous void you’ve left me.
I want you as a person,
not as a beautiful moving stranger,
not as a myth, not even as the vision
that comes to me at night,
but as what I’ve seen when you weren’t looking.
I am here now, alone,
humbled and waiting,
desperate and afraid to know you,
and you don’t know this,
and you don’t see me.
