The moment I first detected her in a crowd
She was not even there
In a turmoil of low-hanging fruits.
She had not yet shown her cards.
Herself.
Undecipherable.
If I plucked her from the moving flesh, would I commit a crime?
Would her face turn grey and
Discouraged?
Did I not have the right?
Her body had no language.
And I never learned how to read.
What only I could see.
I comprehend it as a an unuttered “yes”.
I am a thwarted norm.
Were she to look back at me
Would she merely see herself?
Are we already complicit in
Actions incomplete?
Have I lost her and did not even speak
Make a sound?
Eroticism tries too hard to be subtle.
It all bursts, the air will escape, life.
That’s how our stories go.
Mine and yours?
A lot of things have already happened before we truly meet.
Can she take it?
What I do again and again and again?
“Magdalena” by Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930)
Croque-Melpomene 