How Can You Get In?

You, who I don’t know how to talk to anymore. You, whose body comes to me in a dream only to be gone as soon as I say: your face, your mouth, your arms, your breasts, your feet. What happens when you die? The broken light switch in the kitchen, the front door knob glistening in the saucer by the window. How can you get in? This solitude, no match for your solitude, which must want to be sung again in the clear strong throats of the living. You, who must want to be useful again, now that the two of us can see the myths we made of ourselves. What use is this skin now that you no longer have it? Would you have lived differently, read other books, loved other men, spent more time in the woods, the mountains, or the sea? What hap- pens when you die? Teach me to listen so that I might know what you know now, that I might carry your voice to the ears of those whose hearing is only turned inward.