In recent times,
There has been
No intimacy between us
I can’t get close
To the boy
Even if I try

When I pull him close
And fondly nuzzle his hair,
He flinches from the touch
Of my breasts and moves away
Forgetting that they had once
Processed my blood to feed his hunger

When I reach with my hand
To run my fingers through his hair —
Tendrils upright like reeds on a riverbank —
He pushes it away, and moves on

He, eager to go beyond
Childhood’s threshold,
And I, wanting to reclaim it —
In this struggle between us,
Our affinity wanes

He, who had asked me,
On a night of the moon’s full retreat,
If the sun too would be gone someday,
Has no more answers to seek from me

Today,
When the gloom that has found
Shelter in my room
Asked me to be let in again,
I was sending away
A dream that came to me
When I had first conceived:

That a radiance would now wash over the gloom
And then gather here, in this room