When I walked across a room I saw myself walking

as if I were someone else,


when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,

as if I were in a movie.


                                    It’s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.


So when I looked at you, I didn’t see you

I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.


I called that outside—watching. Well I didn’t call it anything

when it happened all the time.

But one morning after I stopped the pills—standing in the kitchen

for one second I was inside looking out.


Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.

Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.


My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door

and suddenly I was inside and I saw her.

I looked out from my own eyes

and I saw: her eyes: blue gray    transparent

and inside them: Wendy herself!


Then I was outside again,


and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,

as if Nothing Had Happened.

She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been There

for Maybe 40 Seconds,

and that then I was Gone.


She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months,

years, the entire time she’d known me.


I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;

she had not Noticed The Difference.


This happened on and off for weeks,


and then I was looking at my old friend John:

: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,


and he: (and this was almost unbearable)

he saw me see him,

and I saw him see me.


He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,

or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,


but what he said mattered only a little.

We met—in our mutual gaze—in between

a third place I’d not yet been.