Ballade

There are two rooms, and now, when it is night,
we stay inside. We choose to be alone
though we are lonely, though there is no light,
because we know, as deep as blood in bone,
that our two rooms have walls that creak and groan,
so thick we cannot ever exit, quite;
there are no doors, so, lonely and in pain,
we stay apart and suffer on our own.
There is no union, no unbroken chain.

But more than anything on earth, I want
that silver bond, the treasure that I missed:
two of one mind, awareness that would haunt
all of my thoughts. Yet, it does not exist,
neither for me nor anyone. We’ve kissed,
but all for nothing. Kisses only taunt,
intimate, true, but false and cheap and vain,
and for two souls to keep eternal tryst
is, I believe, a dream we can’t attain.

So maybe that’s the silly reason why
I dream—of telepathic childhood friends,
teams with two players, promises to die
at the same moment, cycles without ends,
ropes and red strings and tea-and-coffee blends,
opposites, circles, coins, a watchful eye,
knowing and being known, salvation, twins—
grasping this fiction and the want it sends:
not to know where I stop and he begins.