The Shared World.
Into the bow of your ear I whispered the secret story.
Now you can't sleep either.
Consider it part of your own memory.
Connecting our childhoods that would have otherwise
never crossed.
I fell down, and your knee was scraped.
I stuffed the yellow cake into my mouth,
and your stomach cramped.
When you were abandoned, grief filled my well.
The private ravages of our spent youth and adulthood,
now implicitly intimate.
You pull me to you because I have already
softened your sharp elbows.
The pressure of your fingers in my shoulder
leaves an impression as if in need.
I had touched myself.
We are insomniacs.
The grip of night freeing us from the slept-through day
and its demands.
It is true, once you know, you can't unknow.
So we ruminate on literature and the gods,
and continually seek the ousia of the empty jug.
But we need no wine, really.
We are eager to get on with it.
To take in, or do whatever forwards this living.
This tripwire keeping us tied, kite to string, present to past,
arrow to quiver.