contemplating the yoke

she doesn't begin to know how to heal
this rift in her reality. there is the man
who comes to her home and says
love, says meant to be, says care. she
watches him watch his children, absorbed;
he seems to know some of love, at least--
wonders if he could ever feel this way about her
or any woman again. she remembers how
she lived within her own children for a while
amid the anger her husband carried, resentment
for how life unfolds, even as the home
he dreamed rose up around him. shelter had
to be enough, the children fed and growing so fast.

he says he knows what to do , just not why anymore.
she feels as if a stranger to himself is the one who
sits on her bed and plays music.sometimes they hold
hands and close their eyes and it's then the bright
angelic light rushes through her eyes. he says
he feels it too, but then he leaves, sometimes
for weeks. she says good morning and good
good night to a hologram that reads from a mock up
of a mac. then one sunday he's up early
making potato pancakes ,the smell of salt
on his shirt is mouth watering and his face is mobile
as if the wax were becoming flesh so she knows
he's back. he looks at her with eyes that want

to turn her into something she never was, and she
looks at him with eyes the same way. why can't they
keep moving into what's in front of them instead of watching
the shadows on the cave walls? she moves back into
the darkness, used to things with less substance.
he turns to the stove and flips the pancakes.


she is alone in her bedroom. he is alone in his bedroom.
they have so seldom been in the same place together
she wonders where they have to basis to say "love".
might as well say stubborn, clingy, co dependent.
they have no history, only spots of concurrence.
at various times it's been clear to her that what he wants
is his old life back, that what she is
is a plug in, that the hologram is more inside his heart
than outside, projecting emotions onto the body,
projecting her body onto some semblance of emotion.
she understands he holds such anger inside, a hot spring
a cold revenge. she thinks that he cannot allow
himself to love again. that he, like herself, has scars
from where he reached for the fire she follows
the twisted skin with her eyes but is afraid to touch
she flows between the ridges, tries to color the patches
where the pigment burnt out.

he's afraid of so much. mainly she thinks, it's the physical
between them that clouds his reason it's the way
the ground absorbs him and he's drifting
thru a nebula created only between them
and he wants to call this love wants to think
that it exists outside where they are and is fed
and kept alive even when he retreats .she starves
while she waits, unable to fly without the rising
drafts they make. she has no other way to say it.

it's outside description. maybe that's why they call it love.
but if he feels it like she does, how can he retreat,over
and over? she understands the demands of time, so
she tries to not fester, not fret. but how can he not need
this as much as she does, he seems to get more distant
the closer she tries to move. it feeds her own resentment
and anger. he says he's not like this, he implies he knows
how to be, and why. she thinks he shows her a mask.
she knows how loud his actions scream to be let go.

if what he says and what he does do not match
which should she believe? he says luv ya. and she knows.