I want to believe that it started in
innocence—my perceiving your pain and
relating it to my own,
feeling an outpouring of love for you
in your loneliness,
wanting to touch you there.
Or perhaps it was always an avoidance:
a refusal to face
my own loneliness,
my pain,
that incessant pressing against my own small,
cramped circle of awareness.
But the loneliness, the loneliness!
I must have felt it so acutely—we both must have.

When did we first make the contract?
When did we first decide to grow within
each other instead of within ourselves?
I am crying here, wondering.
Do people do this regularly?
Is it permanent?
Will it be pulling at me, forever, patiently
waiting for me to follow you
into that small,
bleak spot of earth?