"You drift through lives unseen my dear."

She speaks is spoken to

She laughs and contributes to scenes

And events

But as a shadow

On the periphery of light and sound

(And the passion adventure

Intoxication provocation

Of lives she'll never live)

Deliberately

One day she is convenient

The other

A bothersome thing

To be dealt with as one chastises a petulant child

"Be thankful. There are others far worse off than you."

Oh but there are others far better off-

Though they'd not be considered such

Money being the marker of it all

Money her downfall

The pause button was pressed

Her life on hold

Repressed

Years coming and years going

Chiding her inability to change them

Though they

Never really belonged to her-

Others calling dibs first

And she left with the left-overs

(The dregs of living left after they'd

Already wrung it dry)

Some murky few sips

She accepts for they are forced into her lips

(Lips which welcome them in secret?)

His heart beats far

"I see you."

His eyes assume that which others too soon abandoned

Or maybe never held fast:

The capacity to see her as something other

Than an appendage-

His distant voice un-pausing her

Causing her to look at fading edges

Now grown flesh and pumping blood

(And her middle... how it now cries for him to fill her!)

...

Time pauses him now

Still silent moments when he stares past crowded faces

And

Oblivious to their chatter

Is detained without will-

Suspended in an essay she delivered to his inbox:

"If life is a desert and each of us a nomad

Seeking an oasis within which to rest

Recuperate

Rejoice-

(Usually equating this oasis with one beloved)

Are we not then an oasis in return for others?

"I see you"

Is your way of saying I have found shelter in you

Safety and least concern-

A fellow nomad offering back what he is given."

A shadow

Meanders across her screen

Carrying within it

Everything she yearns

Her pregnant mind ever-concocting

Inedible tastes

(Hard to find mid of the night

Dashes of futility on his part)

Indelible aftertastes