NOT ALONE

If you think to be alone is to walk about in the rooms of

your house and hear the neighbours dying on their

terraces and see the evening busily gathering in the

jacaranda trees, you're wrong. You're not alone yet.

And if you think to look into the mirror is to be alone,

you're wrong again because the mirror says, you're poor,

perplexed, where is the centre of your light, where is that

essential recognition? Of yourself?

You're not alone when you sit alone on your bed and suck

at a fruit and let the juice dribble down your chin, onto

your chest, down between your breasts and then fall

asleep with sticky fingers dreaming. Any dream proves it.

To be alone is to be here, but I am always somewhere

else. I am always falling, my love: a parachute on fire, the

last branch of the tree that stands apart, the cloud that

somebody tore up, the dream weighed down with

pillows, the descent …