10/11/17

LONELY - Natalie Wee

I have taken to being in public places
by myself. My cleverest trick was

to hold intimacy against bone
without telling it my name. Like any

unloved thing, I don’t know if I’m real
when I’m not being touched.

Because who am I but who
I am to someone else?

I know now the ways of nameless
birds & the cost of a life built

from waiting. I go to any window
I please, bare-handed, hovering

a/part. Watching when devotion
becomes duty. When soft becomes

stranger. Look. I was soft once, &
then I was a stranger to

myself. No tender mouth is worth
a slow death. No heart is worth

the belly of a beast. The secret is:
tender attends the heels of bruises.

The secret is: be bigger
than your alone.

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