svraph-moved: winterlief:—from Marie Howe’s book Magdalene [ID: four images of black tex
svraph-moved: winterlief:—from Marie Howe’s book Magdalene [ID: four images of black text on a white background reading: The AfflictionMarie HoweWhen I walked across a room I saw myself walking as if I were someone else,when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress, as if I were in a movie.It’s what I thought you saw when youlooked at me.So when I looked at you, I didn’t see youI saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.I called that outside-watching. Well I didn’t call it anythingwhen it happened all the time.But one morning after I stopped the pills-standing in the kitchenfor one second I was inside looking out.Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen doorand suddenly I was inside and I saw her.I looked out from my own eyes and I saw: her eyes: blue gray transparentand inside them: Wendy herself!Then I was outside again,and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,as if Nothing Had Happened.She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been Therefor Maybe 40 Seconds,and that then I was Gone.She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months,years, the entire time she’d known me.I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;she had not Noticed The Difference.This happened on and off for weeks,and then I was looking at my old friend John: : suddenly I was in: and I saw him,and he: (and this was almost unbearable)he saw me see him,and I saw him see me.He said something like, You’re going to be ok now, or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,but what he said mattered only a little.We met-in our mutual gaze-in between a third place I’d not yet been./end ID.] -- source link
#poetry