A
My boyfriend listens patiently to me when I worry about wasting time
I pause to examine his profile,
measure each curve as if I am drawing it
He moves to look at me–
“Stop, I am examining your profile”
B
To assure me he says things like, “It’s a hard thing to waste”
Maybe I agree
But it must mean something when you forget yesterday
or weeks
like you lose your train of thought mid-sentence
C
Sometimes his stillness is a one-sided conversation
D
A moment is the only moment when time stretches out to
something, or to do something
I guess there isn’t really a word for it
Well it wouldn’t call itself a moment because
a moment is something you can find in the dictionary
I guess there shouldn’t really be a word for it
Not the mood or the touching
Not the movement or the sounds or the thing that happened
E
We are all unable to avoid ourselves in mirrors and conversations
F
You can’t stop listening to yourself because when you try
you are just listening to the words stop thinking
echo through you
G
Hearing your voice bounce off the inside of a cave
is not listening to the cave
H
When I think about him I am dwelling on space
he turns over and puts a hand on the curve
where my waist makes room for all the other atoms moving around
even if there will be a memory of lying here,
time isn’t a part of it
I know this because when I remember the moment
or whatever I am supposed to call it
I didn’t make time for it
and I know he didn’t, because I remember where both of his hands were:
one on my waist, the other on his chest
I do remember that he was being perfectly still, only my eyes were moving
to describe the edge of his face
I remember where my hands were
so we must have only been there for as long as it takes for someone’s hand to be on
someone else’s waist
I
There are no numbers in this poem because they
don’t reflect anything
for example: 11 is not a drawing of a 1 standing in front of a mirror
Numbers measure moments and describe dwellings.
J
Stillness is the place where space and time harmonize
It is a cave where they are not a dissonance that splits you
but a hand on the curve of your lower back
which pushes you towards listening
K
The inside of your body is dark
and nobody has ever heard it
The inside of your body is an echo chamber into which
nobody has ever said a thing
let alone something like
we’re wasting time
L
In a conversation
everything is a reflection
M
The discovery of displacement was the first time someone
paused to notice space happening.
It will seem like there is too much to say
and a pause could not possibly fit into your sentences
It will seem like noticing
will overflow into waste
Displacement is a way of noticing how things fit
M
If I describe the edge of a face, I draw
from memories of noticing and looking
that were long enough to occur
and my hand reflects the pause in the medium of space
L
Yesterday I mentioned that I would like to dwell in a house that I have built
though of course I know that it is only possible
to dwell in a house
if you have built it
“But there are plenty of houses around that don’t need building”
is exactly what he’d never have said
“But we already live in a house that we built”
is exactly what he couldn’t yet say
or
something I might have heard him say
“Oh, yes” I would have nodded
“I don’t know why I said that
I am so lost sometimes”
And I will have scanned the dark room,
placed my hand on the damp wall for support
as the echoes of my responses drowned each other out
K
There is a difference between an absence of light
and an absence of movement:
stillness is two-dimensional
it is experienced in duration, and darkness
which has always existed on the opposite side of your eyes
is a mirror that absorbs light and evolves cavernous space
J
If you want to know the depth of something dark
(say the distance from the front door to the cellar
or between your eyes and your heart)
simply notice the moment you have stopped noticing
G
Displacement is a way of channeling energy, as if I
have noticed my reflection in a pool and
the way the light bounces between my many eyes suddenly feels as if
I am looking at someone with whom I am deeply in love
F
I have never been noticed as anyone else’s reflection
but I don’t believe that this must set a precedent
E
We will climb into a tub full of steaming water
and notice a sheen all over the floor
“I used too much” I will say, not
making a move to clean it up because
at this point I will be submerged
It is very difficult to leave submersion
especially to clean a mess you have made
I will probably be taking up more than
my share of room
When we emerge from the bath
he will soak up the water with a towel
and wring it out into a graduated cylinder
to measure our volume
D
Everything is much harder to waste
if you can use it to measure
C
Water has a way of sloshing into everything
even works typed in virtual space
and I wonder how many poems have been written by human hands
that weren’t soaking wet
B
I reach a hand into dark pools and estimate how my movements
exact a change on all that I cannot touch
A
Embodiment is an endless conversation
Evelyn C. McLean 