Two Souls

My beauty - 

if I have any,

is the sort of beauty

that only shows itself

at a certain angle,

in a certain borrowed light.

He’s looking at me now

and though I’m pretending I don’t know,

he keeps his eyes fixed

like glass concentrating the sun 

to light a tiny flame,

as if I’m not already -

madly, wildly, ablaze.

And yet when we talk,

we both work very hard

to avoid looking at each other,

so hard in fact -

that all my other faculties

cease to interact.

I can’t remember who I am,

why I’m standing here,

what on earth it is that I’m doing

and suddenly I’m a million iron filings,

being sucked up at great speed.

He is sharp, astute

and contained like a vessel that would never allow itself to sink,

my heart is stark naked

and thrashing about on the outside of my body -

like a fish struggling to breathe.

Still, he doesn’t say much

like people worth listening to,

rarely do

his wisdom is exacting, pithy,

sometimes acid

sometimes awkward,

as though talk is frivolous

when there is so much to get on and do.

So we stick to safe topics -

he asks after my boy and where he is today

and I answer quickly, he’s with a friend - gone to play.

Mostly I realise that our worlds could never merge

but sometimes I’m on the verge of asking -

if it’s possible that they might?

But he knows that I’m a bird

pausing between flights,

who he might only capture

at a certain height.

And I know he is an arrow

focussed on his drive

and blurring his focus,

would simply mean we’d collide.

Still, when he looks at me -

just like he’s doing right now,

I wonder if perhaps I’m always this beautiful

from every single angle

in every kind of light.

Jemima Roberts