
Portrait of the architect as a young girl
Who does your sadness belong to? You wrote it down on a piece of paper You left where anyone could find And I am anyone. That was last year You said, crumpling the paper into shapes Pre-ordained in the wood that once grew In a forest we’d never have walked through. It was December when you wrote and January When I found it and you looked at me For a long second like the time an oyster Laps a nascent pearl in nacre. I was too late Or you were never writing to me at all, You were a historian or a dramaturge; You traced a mark in the sand, expecting It to be washed away. I imagine you did A cartwheel after you put the page down. A hand-stand, walking across the room On your tender palms, your bare soles Facing no little sky.