Thoughts in Bonsai: Twenty-Three

1. I gaze into your eyes with my own drowsy, intoxicated ones,
and only then does your sleep seem to come!
You pour yourself out completely for everyone else,
why is there never time when it comes to me?

2. I feel this strange urgency coursing through me always,
are you telling me I must leave right now?

3. When you love someone, create a world for them—a world that begins with you and ends in you.

4. How perfectly timed your arrival was, and your departure too,
you taught me love then fled away, and I could never truly have you!

5. I have drunk poison through loving and loving still, yet I haven't died;
I never realized before that neglect is deadlier than any poison!

6. When you turn off the light at midnight and lie down,
do you really hold that new person tight in your arms?

7. Don't give me any more poems—if my clumsy hands write an epic in response to your verse, who will take responsibility for that, tell me?

8. I've come to hide life's discord within poetry's rhythm,
to heal old wounds through the lure of fresh ones.

9. Listen, it's not so easy to kill someone who dares to write poetry in answer to poetry!

10. My love has separated desire from affection, brought tears of tenderness to the lover's eyes,
and you—you've come to teach me about love!?

11. Writing about you has worn away the bones in my back,
I've summoned my own death and spread wings into the fire!

12. Mark this well: one day these dead letters of mine will speak,
and fire will burn in your chest too—you who never learned to love in life.

13. You and I have no connection,
yet neither of us truly connects with the two people we're each with!

14. I lack in love,
you are careless by nature.

15. No matter what kingdom of letters I'm granted,
I'll never be able to write anything properly about you!

16. Once you learn to stay awake through the night, you'll see—you're keeping someone else awake too!

17. Your mind harbors doubt, the fear of losing everything,
but whatever happens, no fear truly lasts forever!

18. I'm writing my heart away in your name,
don't go trying to sell it again if you're ever in need!

19. Don't let me go,
don't let me go!
Because only I know that in this terrible world, even when everyone gives you sunshine, no one else will offer you the address of shade.

20. The body I once anointed with perfume by my own hand—how dare you want to smear camphor on that same body!?