Reflection

On the outside, looking in,
his belief is in heat. His belief
warms through
what you
won't or can't see, in your solitary cave
where shadows of things
may enter.

He peers
from the fraction of a space between panes,
complete in all dimensions though touching
neither, hovering
on the boundary between
starvation
and desire.

His eyes are cavernous.
His mouth is too broken to speak
any words but the words of his loneliness,
too broken to sing
any song but a psalm to his solitude
in the surface
of the glass.

Let him in?
But where would we put him, this friend of yours,
with his all-encompassing sadness,
his melancholy so deep it reaches
above and below his flattened frame?

Anywhere, anywhere, any
where small things can slip away
and be forgotten
until found by some new pair of
arms, some
reaching eyes
first entering.