Collapsed in a Pearl of Decades
Against all ritual we slept
Without sex, more intimate and aware
Of our innate deeper connection
We were souls that had been
Swallowed and mumbled by the world
Against all innocence, we had been played
Down to our roots, like boughs receded
By the elements, living & loving
There were idioms in Mandarin
That encapsulated what we had become
Monks or ghosts, or valleys of rain
And a shrinking of orange light
When dusk hits you bare-chested
On those days somewhere
Lurking between Spring & Summer
We were the unsung breaths suspended
That collapsed in poems, we knew absence
And cherished our abandonments
Like the self-pity that stored deep feeling
For a universe that begged to be forgiven
We had to undergo periods of purification
The kind solitude that is a shelter & a curse
A kind of barefoot splendour
Of learning again about the mute warmth of self.
Wuji Seshat 