A Kind of Distance

Today I'm remembering you terribly.
Have you seen the sky?
It's going to rain hard today, isn't it?

Will you let me touch you for a while?

One day suddenly inside my chest
began writhing in terrible pain!
That was the first day I knew—
you had never loved me at all.

Tell me, can love follow rules...
what do you think?

And restlessness?
Can that be forcibly hidden away?
Or these feelings I've kept for you...
how do I give them back?

If only you wanted, I could...
bear it all!
Can't I now? Tell me?

See—now I don't ask you
to hold me tight even a little;
even when tears come to my eyes—
I don't come before you;
even when my heart stays deeply troubled—
I don't bother you by telling you.

How would I tell you?
I no longer give you...
news of my feelings.

Have I managed it—
to stay at just the right distance from you?
Don't you feel anymore that
I've bound you to me?

I desperately want to know,
how am I doing?

All this longing in my heart for you...
how would you know of it?
By reading my letters?
Were they then what held—
wrapped in an ocean of possessiveness...
crowds of word-clusters written in heaped letters?

This very writing—
once brought us close;
has it now given us distance too?

I don't know—
I don't even have the courage to want to know.