Duality
Someone is here who isn’t here,
who left but did not leave,
who fills with corporeal yet empty silence
vast stretches of a shared contracting space.
Someone speaks but soundlessly,
reaches out yet does not move,
who lacking substance still embodies
in sound and sight and touch
the brutal contradiction
at the core of my own being.
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There is a breath upon my cheek
at times of solitude
and a touch that warms my arm
when I am quite alone
and the sureness I am whole
though broken and apart.
Time comes and goes and turns in both directions
as the future is relived
and the past is yet to be,
while the aching of eternity
is over in an instant.
Someone is here and then is gone
inexplicably in both reveals
who holds me down and lifts me up,
heavy as lead and light as a leaf,
in the terrible fullness of life
after a death.
