Intimate Stranger
Close but not close,
touching but not touching,
skin to skin but air to air,
sight to sight but blinded eyes,
revolutions sealed inside,
empathy yet a separate island
wreathed by the consentrated mist,
the juice of the nautical slavers
on a windless day on the high seas,
a blind journey into psychic harbors
reserved only for the divine to enter,
a shield that separates you from me,
the loneliness of our separate islands,
the arms too short to reach into the psychic,
to see its heart beating, its motors running,
its intelligence, its hidden desires.
Though she gives her heart to me,
it is still too far away to touch,
still an island separated by loneliness,
a life filled with hope of unification
crying out in vain like a wandering cloud
that it might turn into teardrops in the eyes of the beloved, the parting of the mist
surrounding the island.
