my lips on another her,
and make them walk
the runways of Paris,
of Vienna, and of all
that will never be again.
Jealousy is the sentence
on my frustrated imagination,
which demands the lips of the other
shout my name and say she is me
and that the other is her, too.
Jealousy is my shadow, unfolding,
usurping other women’s graces,
while moving away from what we were;
chasing it, chasing myself,
since I no longer know
how to accept myself—without you.
Jealousy is the implicit not explicit;
a compass that explodes and points
toward two opposite norths,
fleeing in both ways.
Jealousy rise like a threat
when the mirror holds not one,
not two, not three;
but several me’s;
and they are my reflection, unraveling,
diverging into many selves:
me with the imagination aflame,
and my duel between
possession and romance.
The erotic, the romantic,
the intellectual or the creative side
are more than the complicity
I once thought I’d treasured.
Jealousy hounds the mystery
and is the time that executes me,
slowly, on me,
toward an end in itself:
no longer there—not as I wished—;
and if it still is—I cannot say—
I feel it being lost
as it moves away.
Yes, it’s jealousy born of absence.
The «I’m ignoring you
with all my might»
it’s my heart bursting
out of my mouth,
beating outward,
‘cause what I feel is changing,
and it’s as real as a trap.
Here, caged, I try to believe
the other her isn’t like me,
and that she isn’t like him.
Today I am an «I wish»
caught within a desire
that I cannot make come true.
This is how a heart
breaks in an instant:
when the truth shatters it,
when you wound it,
when you silence it,
or this self-imposed urge
to desire and to read
my own interests
on another’s lips,
willing myself to misread them.
Yes, this is how a heart
fractures into a thousand instants.
She, the concrete other:
real, imperfect.
She, the symbolic other:
my imagination.
She, the other in you:
tragic complicity.
Who is she?
Are my jealousies the consequence
of a desire undone?
If he is gone,
if today his hand circles her waist
and confides the words
that once were meant for me,
being they, today,
accomplices to all
that I no longer am.