Antipode

Many and many years ago I wrote this:

you, I feel when I touch

everyone that crosses my way on the streets.

your eyes I meet in the faces filling

the sidewalks in stares that recognize

me from somewhere they don't understand.

your hair covers every man's heads,

every woman's backs to make me want to touch them,

to feel you.

you're in the black guy on the corner,

you're in the young lady by my side.

I sense you in the old couple's embrace,

in the impatient driver on the road,

on the sleepy passenger in the bus.

you're in everyone's lips, everyone's shadows,

on every turning head, blinking eyes.

it's your voice I hear on the small talk at the bars,

it's your sigh I perceive beyond the neighbor's closed doors.

you're under my nails, you're in my saliva,

my steps during the days,

my hard breathing late at night.

There was no one specifically in my mind back then, only the craving and the urgency, and the feeling that all this, in essence, was at the tips of my fingers, and escaping me. Longing for contact, in so many levels, but not at random. Some things won't change.