you are a stranger, I keep forgetting

forgetting that with you
I do not speak my mother tongue

what do they call it
when we reach toward one another
across the contorted mirror of our senses
and your glance teaches me
that this is the way

what we say seems to relapse into roots
down
down to the seabed that became
a land of many flocks and pastures

and now
here you are
Stranger

caged wings beat in my body
which remembers these things

remembers its winged lightness
of the beginning

when it was promise

when it was
word

Ioana Ieronim, from *Ariadne's Veil