At first you didn’t know me.
I was a shape moving rapidly, nervous

at the edge of your vision. A flat, high voice,
dark slash of hair across my cheekbone.

I made myself present, though never distinct.
Things I said that he repeated, a tone

you could hear, but never trace, in his voice.
Silence—followed by talk of other things.

When you would sit at your desk, I would creep
near you like a question. A thought would scurry

across the front of your mind. I’d be there,
ducking out of sight. You must have felt me

watching you, my small eyes fixed on your face,
the smile you wondered at, on the lips only.

The voice on the phone, quick and full of business.
All that you saw and heard and could not find

the center of, those days growing into years,
growing inside of you, out of reach, now with you

forever, in your house, in your garden, in corridors
of dream where I finally tell you my name.