I met you next to the sea, I can’t even remember where.
You were just there. You didn’t look at anyone, but
Everybody looked at you. You could feel it.
You walked alongside the shore, your feet engulfed in wet sand,
And you thought about what it would take to disappear.
They all looked at your body, its skin glistening in the roasting
Sunlight, how each muscle moved and composed you, fleshed
You out, and all of them got stuck on the surface of you without
Batting an eye. They gave in to their own enchantment, bewildered,
Their eyes lingered and wandered all over you, just not the eyes, the face,
Where one could have seen what you were contemplating to do.
The grief that pecked at your heart, the loneliness that no one believed
That you could feel. The insecurities underneath everything visible,
How unloved and abandoned you felt once the calls stopped, at night.
You’d kneel in front of a flooded tub and stick your head in until it hurt.
Nobody saw the loose despair quivering across your lips.
They daydreamed about absorbing you entirely, take you home, take you to bed,
Make love to you endlessly without saying a single word, without ever
Realising who you truly were, without you destroying their fantasy.
You’d resent them for making you feel responsible for their
Short-lived adventures and glee, for maintaining yourself
And what you represent to them. You have to be intact.
You have to feel intact. They eat you alive, unaware, that any minute
Now, you’d be ready to give your whole life away, go where it’s deepest
And unpredictable. You think that the sea can read your mind,
See whether your time is really up or whether you can be saved indeed, by anything
At this point, any single little thing to interrupt your gestures, the roundabout
In your head.
Croque-Melpomene 