There on the floor

Before everything
And one of them is me on a train
Sunlight
Rocking back and forth
Warmth
Half sleep
Plugs in the ears but I turn it off
The rattling of the train
The look of cold outside

Something like a boyfriend
A juvenile term
Lover is too intimate
Vague memories of pleasure that fade
Or change
Irrelevant somehow
Or mundane
The clitoris as ordinary a part of the body as the elbow
When I go there to those memories
But I stop
I don’t go there
Cough
I draw away my hand
An ordinary cough
And no fear

Counting things seems like too large a task
The instinct is to mark it impossible
But I think of the times I looked at you
Your shape
Each word and breath
When I do I sense myself shift between encounters
Between instances of my persona in each encounter
A woman who is me
And who was not me
Who isn’t me now
And who always was
I can count them then
Slowly
Perhaps taking forever
But I know each one
Each instance of you

Days when there is nothing but the room
There is nothing
Nothing

Inhale
A lightness, a weightlessness as if I have no weight at all
Separated from my sensations
It becomes math
Awareness
The instance of the body at rest in the space
And I think of you in that form then
All the shapes between us
The movements and the few words
Not joined
Not joined at all
Nevertheless here
Even when you go
Or can no longer be sure of where you are
Here
Together
I don’t know what it is
It has become my life
Or always was