Because where you have touched me
you are not.
                  Because absence is the end of wanting. Because you are only a dream
             or a sickness or

                                                                 someone who likes to watch a creature

overwhelmed by its own begging, watching me be lost
for a while or the rest of my life.

Because the carpenter bee trapped in the house, its thorax polished to a black pitch, is
evidence of your writhe, its fleece worn away from its pacing at the glass, its
writhing—

                                                           what faith then, what news—

Because waiting all day, what am I doing without you, what would I be?

Because you are suddener
than most.

               Because you are more of it than ever I am to believe. Because there is more

                                                      than glass between the bird and its
                                       shadow, the bee and its light—

what felt, what endured—

Because resistance leads only to more resistance, each animal, in its way, refusing to
move but into itself or some other, whether reflection or likeness or the ghostly food
you have us eat.

Because each life rises as it swarms and only the one who
once held it sees it depart. Because unwanted but once
wanted,

I wait at the window for the world’s end
or how it begins.