How can I speak to you, if you
are an image, or an expression,
or a representation of my unfulfilled desires?
When I look into your eyes, do I see a universe
inside and beyond you unfolding? Or do I see
potentials that I had never actualized within myself?
Can I even see you, if I only see dancing shadows, from you,
of wounded experiences, that I, and all the women in my family
my ancestry, have had with men?
Am I looking at you, or the broken
masculine of myself? I can’t really see you,
if you are reduced to, by me, attributes
that reminded me of my dead father,
and my deepest longing for his presence.
Is it possible for me to meet you?
Is it even possible to recognize you as you?
You are fluidity, you are essence
oscillating. Each time I meet you
you are a new person
Can I recognize the newness inside of you?
Can I remember you, without omitting or
offending the newness you had created,
are creating for and of yourself?
Can I wake up each morning
to get to know you all over again,
without forgetting who you were yesterday,
and maintain inexhaustible curiosity
to meet this newness in you, this new being
that you are, and are going to be today
and tomorrow?
My love to you is impossible, if I am unable
to see you without reducing you. Is it even fair,
to you, and me, to play mirror for each other
and call this love? Ain’t we reducing love
to an exchange of playing shadows?
I can’t be with you, even though I am with you
You are not here yet, even though you have already arrived
How can I touch you, if you are not really there?
How much time do you and I really have
together, with this you and this I, without
shadows and memories, without dwelling
or wandering into the more or less than
but now?
By Gracelynn Lau (2017)
gracelynn lau decentering studio 