Though your scent remains
On my clothes, on my shoulder
I can no longer ask of you
For there is a distance between us now

You cannot see, cannot know
How completely, deeply, alone
I am
Not by choice this time—by the natural path of life

And I can never do anything alone again

She who would come with me to
Cairo is gone
It is terrifying—
My only respite:
Two hours Tuesday night
(out of one-sixty-eight)
Where acquaintances read poetry
And talk of futures
—I can never have—
And life—always twos—
And I am alone
And terrified
And no one, no matter how
Kind loving close understanding
Can understand
Or comprehend
Not just my heart, my hope
But my soul
Estranged and terrified

I have never been close
Never loving, completely opening myself,
Placing all that I am in another's arms
Except for her
al-Qahira, the Subduer
the city that loved me—
the only one who's loved me—
the city that I love

"But that was then
And this is now . . ."
And there is so much in the between

That has left me without those precious arms
The embrace that annihilates all
And the caress of peace

I am twenty-one! for the love of mercy
Alone!
Never dated
Once sort-of unofficially engaged-to-be-engaged
Lived fragmentary moments of life on four continents
Enamoured of real cities, cultured cities, living cities
Teeming with refuse, reeking of sewage
Where fathers cradle their dead sons in vain
And known happiness
In a little shop, in a sûq, in the midst of trash

But the only one who understood,
Who'd live with me, at her side
Is gone
And no one else can possibly comprehend
Though they try and I love them
Alone
And cannot hear the call
Of the minaret
Or feel the pull of the alleyways

Or see inside my soul—
Wherever it is—
And feel the terror,
Smell the pain,
Touch the absolute lonely solitude
Of the whole person,
The entireness of me

I love you, dearly, as a friend
And a guardian angel
But this time when I turned
You seemed too far away from me
To stem the flow of blood
And ease the pain

And I cry
for my loss
alone