make me space

Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 2000

make me space when it hurts,
let me cross the in-between space before the dark.
make me space just before it comes, the unnamed.
I'll not sit and witness, I'll dissolve in that glimpse of it,
alien to me, forbidden to the useless stranger.
I'll get soaked and drenched and drowned and you,
dissolving and receding calmly, you'll keep quiet.
I, fully awake on the unbearable surface
of your initial terror,
our burning tremor whirling up my axes.
I, eyes wide open and then blind
to the map of your successive country.
does it snow?
no more pedestrian lights,
no more the loud, yelling sound of traffic.
make me space on the verge of loss,
be aware of my holding my breath,
looking at the train that goes,
ignoring me, forlorn, forsaken.
while I adjust the plastic band,
stubbornly, around my forearm,
pulling with my teeth like this addict I'm,
praying to get the pang
triggered
by the unerring syringe of perplexity.