He sends me bouquets, wine, music, and words in foison, sits in first rows, hovers at doorways.  He will not approach.  But he walks repeatedly and repeatedly into my dreams.  Calmly.  He has taste, he is articulate, he shows intelligence, he is delicate and subtle, but somehow the glow is unreal, like a blue tinge on his flushed face, and I want it beamed elsewhere.  I can run only from the bed, I cannot run from the stage.  I am forced to remain there.  And I am forced to admit that any other flight would be an indelicate gesture.  There are others there.  I must not forget.  But I have had cringes that lasted for days, screams stretching the inside of my skin, floating along it like air bubbles under ice searching for a hole to pop through.  And I have been left with a distaste for stage lights and edges and the void beyond them filled with his stillness and his overbright, persistent eyes.  They are as immobile as I am, chained before him, chained before everybody by the umbilical microphone.

First published: February, 2011
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