Who Are You And Whom Do You Love?

by Bhanu Kapil

A month from now. A week from now. Tomorrow. When he goes. The going.
I’ll make crepes, walk by the river with the dog, float candles in a pudding
basin; the usual. He’s gone. Between our bodies: the sun at 5 a.m.; fifty-seven
Herefords, and a Brahma bull that broke the river fence; four and a
half thousand hummingbirds; a dying man; a man who is about to knock
on the door of a woman with black eyes, to tell her that he loves her; the
woman herself, who is drawing a bath. She can’t hear the door above the
water. And her eyes aren’t really black. They’re brown. She lights a match.

Floating candles. The incommensurable distance. I forgot to memorize
his face.