“Now, absence can exist only as a consequence of the other: it is the other who leaves, it is I who remain.”
– – Roland Barthes
A set stage opens
provision to quick changes,
poses without postures.
Within each moment’s
a tableaux: any movement,
like time, but a coincidence.
As a pause before entering,
he leans in the door way,
studied in his nonchalance.
Intrigued, his gaze holds her;
she looks towards him,
bemused, but unresponsive.
Not quite the melodramatic
hand to the forehead
languishing back into a pillow
on an overstuffed settee,
yet – – her spirit persists,
to which he still responds.
The theater’s barren.
Near the stage edge,
he listens distantly,
surprised by an echo:
was that him, or her,
he hears before turning away?
The stage is empty;
he’s the audience now.
She is not present,
except as absence.
He’s always there;
she never was.
(February 9, 2015)
subtext 