SHORT TIME

I am haunted by the sadness of men hanging out at night in all the parks and alleys of the world. They wait and meander weighing measuring the safer distance between dread and desire. Every face a catalog of possibilities, every look a whole vocabulary of need. Tonight, you are the dream who walks in my waking sleep, who bears miraculously the shape voice motion of remembered love. How can I resist the reckless Leap from the world of Furtive bushes and tunneling headlights to this room, no less anonymous, of thin walls, thinning mattresses where we grapple and trash like beached sea creatures breathing the dry unfamiliar air? When you stand to go, I ease myself into the hollow your body leaves. I press the faint smell of you to my face. O Christ, were I loving you drinking your blood, eating your own flesh! But the morning betrays nothing. the chair in the corner stands mute, the mirror repeats your absence. When the curtains are flung back to let the harsh light in, the bed looms empty. I am finally all I have.

-- Jaime An Lim --