It’s no use — I can feel your events as they pass
These to me my watcher shows:
Smiling teeth like pearly knives, prismatic
And the Cherished one, framed prettily
For me to look at, fixed
Like a pain-jewel in a setting.
It does not matter, what I do not see:
You cannot save me with screens.
My Watcher watches, she has no choice;
She tugs at the chronological string.
She traces back to a time within reason
And day by day, by inch, it retreats.
You cannot hide the thread from her.
If she cannot see, she imagines
Through gaps and obfuscations
And privacy settings, divining
That little knot — that was when I knew you —
Escaping, for we are strangers.
You cannot hide how long it’s been; she reports,
Gropes at the frayed edges of memory,
Annealing with deductive stitches.
The distance of the timeline, the length of it —
It is all horrifyingly before her
And she reports, she reports.