Other

I always felt my otherness acutely
It radiated from my skin like black winged butterflies
Struck the light somehow inferior
Left me empty

You were his passion
Surely?
You for whom he lost his love
Like some gnawed bone
In a garden over run with weeds

What was it
About you that
Clung
So fiercely
A creeping vine on the face of time
What lay buried
In the brilliantly painted sarcophagus of your smile?

Many a night
I raced through the celluloid track of that old camera
Burning spools of misery and regret
Developing imaginings where you were the other
Wondering if you could fare as well as I
In this half life

Yet still
I painted you victorious
Children on your knee
Your faithful, loving husband
Whittling away the years
Spent on your restoring love

I longed to be you
Although I detested you
Raged against your haves and wants
Beat you into a palatable pill
That I could swallow
Tolerate
Give in to.

What impossible latch key had you swallowed
Stored in the pit of your clear glass belly?
His faith clipped and pasted onto your skin
Like a religion of knowing
Lighting the votive of his sad, sweet smile

pushed and pulled like some magnet
Everything brought you closer to me
The world grew into
My desire to inhabit you
Quell my own inadequacies
Harvest its rewards

I am older now
Your vision looms more quietly
It no longer trips me on the stairs
Envy gives way to pity
Apology to regret
All this time we were much the same
Looking for ourselves
In the drawn faces of each other.