Jesse Weiner - Afterimage

she never thought
that I might know a
woman's way to
love in silence,

she never saw
me by a woman's
love, but paid for it
with my absence.

a woman's silence
can't be bought
and must be paid.
she taught me this-

the silence of
a woman's love, tension
recovered. how many I've
heard, remembering

what could not
be cheap or simple,
but love reflected
in the past tense,

days behind her
using her love
to solve and create
those memories,

withdrawn, shadowed
by a film, itself
projected to a screen,
filtered with silence.

this one never heard
her voice, used
speech in other ways,
by lapses, hoping

to have all of them
filled without asking,
pure that way, in
lack of control,

for what must be
asked can not be given,
what is offered
is stored, restored

and once lost
could be bought or
thought of again.
her silence

remains with me,
her words without
echoes, her presence
cut and recut

like a film, like shadow,
inflected by
the random construction
of her memory,

resonant somehow, together
her silence and mine,
reflected in her new past.
my future seems

to be the creation
of another one's memory,
one more reflection
never seen,

never felt, heard,
but in that way.
one more, a silent
one remembers me

and I feel her gaze,
her thoughts of me,
that were never
there, with me with her.

Jesse Weiner

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