by Sarah Howe
after Neruda, Sonnet XVII
For a few months around two-and-a-half you mixed up you & I.
Poems, of course, do it all the time. I’d say, Wait, you need your hat!
& you took that you as a fixed star to navigate by, not knowing yet
how stars, according to the position of the viewer, shift in the sky.
It would take me a moment to adjust, & your face, in that glitch
of light delay, took on the disconcerting air of telepath or scryer
deep into my heart, young & ancient at once: You want milk. Do I?
Or one performing the toddler Jedi mind trick with a finger twitch.
I come here: an entreaty in your mouth, waiting for the other, me,
to step through into the rippling mirror world, and embrace you
whole again. Things you’d rather not know, children show you
in yourself. Viewed from earth, stars trace nervous loops. How time
would crawl & race those early days, our worlds still so intertwined
your face was mine, your head nodded into sleep, & my eyes closed.
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