According to our memory, everyone is dead.
Do you know how many deaths live inside your head?
It doesn’t take long to forget
Who someone is when we get upset.
We no longer remember
The good things about each other.
Is that you? Are you the one I knew,
Back when I was younger, and you were twenty-two?
Is that you, who I kissed years ago?
You no longer love me, so you wouldn’t know.
And what do I know? You once held me
With arms that died in nineteen sixty-three.
You had arms, slender as arrows—
You led me into the part of you
Which narrows and narrows.
I looked in your eyes when you did this.
That was some kiss.
But this is not you anymore—
You call behind you as you open the door.
Everyone is dead who I knew,
Everyone living. Especially you.