Selva Oscura

BY Petra White

Hogging both time and world,
soul of another’s
body, making us
as we make it,
no fighting for it,
it blasts doubt out.

Some lovers live each other out,
their love
stretches
beyond their years of beauty or keeps
their beauty, an old woman
wheeling her husband in a chair,
her love, his, flickers
through human cracks
and finds
its way to survive, alive as life, death-bound
no more than they,
sex still in them.

It is early,
we have not crossed each other,
we keep love on our dinner plates, and horror
that rips the mind out
doesn’t come.
What is love
if we can kill it?

Ourselves obscure us, we obscure ourself, there is no distance,
love
the small chunk of light by which
I almost see you.