Short Time

by Jaime An Lim


I am haunted by the sadness of men
hanging out at night
in all the parks and alleys of the world.
They wait and meander
weighing, measuring
the safer distance
between dread and desire.
Every face a catalog of possibilities,
every look a whole vocabulary of need.

Tonight you are the dream
who walks in my waking sleep,
who bears miraculously
the shape voice motion of remembered love.
How can I resist the reckless
leap from the world
of furtive bushes and tunneling headlights
to this room, no less anonymous,
of thin walls, thinning mattresses
where we grapple and thrash
like beached sea creatures
breathing the dry unfamiliar air?

When you stand to go, I ease myself
into the hollow your body leaves.
I press the faint smell of you on my face.

O Christ, were I loving you
drinking your blood. eating your flesh!

But the morning betrays nothing.
The chair in the corner stands mute,
the mirror repeats your absence.
When the curtains are flung back
to let the harsh light in,
the bed looms empty.

I am finally all I have.