This is only one of the many interpretations of jealousy:
a collection of five poems.
Poem–Me
Jealousy is to paint
my lips on another her,
and make them walk
the runways of Paris,
of Vienna, and of all
that will never be again.
Jealousy is the sentence
on my frustrated imagination,
which demands the lips of the other
shout my name and say she is me
and that the other is her, too.
Jealousy is my shadow, unfolding,
usurping other women’s graces,
while moving away from what we were;
chasing it, chasing myself,
since I no longer know
how to accept myself—without you.
Jealousy is the implicit not explicit;
a compass that explodes and points
toward two opposite norths,
fleeing in both ways.
Jealousy rise like a threat
when the mirror holds not one,
not two, not three;
but several me’s;
and they are my reflection, unraveling,
diverging into many selves:
me with the imagination aflame,
and my duel between
possession and romance.
The erotic, the romantic,
the intellectual or the creative side
are more than the complicity
I once thought I’d treasured.
Jealousy hounds the mystery
and is the time that executes me,
slowly, on me,
toward an end in itself:
no longer there—not as I wished—;
and if it still is—I cannot say—
I feel it being lost
as it moves away.
Yes, it’s jealousy born of absence.
The «I’m ignoring you
with all my might»
it’s my heart bursting
out of my mouth,
beating outward,
‘cause what I feel is changing,
and it’s as real as a trap.
Here, caged, I try to believe
the other her isn’t like me,
and that she isn’t like him.
Today I am an «I wish»
caught within a desire
that I cannot make come true.
This is how a heart
breaks in an instant:
when the truth shatters it,
when you wound it,
when you silence it,
or this self-imposed urge
to desire and to read
my own interests
on another’s lips,
willing myself to misread them.
Yes, this is how a heart
fractures into a thousand instants.
She, the concrete other:
real, imperfect.
She, the symbolic other:
my imagination.
She, the other in you:
tragic complicity.
Who is she?
Are my jealousiesthe consequence
of a desire undone?
If he is gone,
if today his hand circles her waist
and confides the words
that once were meant for me,
being they, today,
accomplices to all
that I no longer am.
Poem — He to the Other Her (alternative: Kiss You)
The vertigo of your lips
is the poem’s temptation
wishing to kiss and
F
A
L
L
them;
far away, the jealous moon,
envying the constellation
of your moles.
I, writing them, and, on tiptoe,
turning you into verse;
you, wanting me to confess them:
that these letters are
a rain of ink from the scent
of your flesh colliding with mine;
though I stand above you,
my height bows before your eyes,
and I lift this poem onto tiptoe
to see us there, between shadows,
because your eyes deserve it,
entrusting my gaze to yours
as dark as yours,
and undressing mine
for this second time.
Poetess:
I no longer know if it is you,
your lips once more,
or others, different ones,
or mine repeating
the damned pleasure
of kissing you
with all your name.
Poem — Simply Her
If she speaks his language,
sets his life to music,
and breathes within your verses,
What am I beside her?
If her breasts are
smaller than mine,
if I am sharper, prettier
and more than her
(in everything),
why do I feel smaller?
I can confess:
I never knew how to truly see you,
or to give worth to what you were.
If you kiss other canvases,
may the oil paint not erase me;
may not erase me the oil paint;
may you not kiss other paintings.
I deny being a frame,
I deny being an attic,
and I deny being dust
or a frame in forgotten garret.
I was wetness and brush,
I was crack on canvas,
and I was life
as it left me.
I am neither paint that’s past
nor ancient page;
neither forgetting of memories
nor memories of forgetting.
No.
I am scratch of story,
white cloth
and colored cotton.
And over itself, a story—
white:
seedbed of strokes,
of distant shadow
and pigment inscribed
on the back of a goodbye.
Poem—Her Within Me
She in bed is him in the other;
he with the other is she with him.
The other is irrelevant:
her nose brushing his cheeks is my jealousy.
I lie.
You taste her lips, every corner of her mouth,
and you devour her.
You take her through the museum,
the plan I always denied you,
and look at her, there, gazing at the paintings
until their beauty unravels, once hidden from me;
If only I had known how to read them,
the same way you describe her smile,
I’d say you’re falling in love.
I know it well, for once I was yours.
Her woman’s figure, veiled by a dress
though naked in backlight,
is the one that wraps you each night,
the one that senses
your hard cock has a destination,
deep within, so slowly, until she ends
in a whispered “I love you.”
I feel her breasts orbiting my mind;
I curse that mine are no longer the dock
where you slept
—you and your dreams
drowned on them—
after love and the burning collision
of our two bodies.
I can’t find a way to haul gravity back
from them to my curves,
to a world with a name,
nor can I shut out the wayfarers
who will remain strangers
until I learn to un-know you,
completely.
And I beg that her nipples
not be the ones that slide
and crash against your museums.
Poem — Caught Within
I am on the edge,
on the edge and above my own abyss,
caught in the recursion of this never-desire.
And if I could kill it,
I’d say that not desiring it
would be enough.
Then, stop!
Why this ambivalence of the heart?
If a desire is irresoluble,
I would escape from it
by simply not biting into it,
and be free of you and her, wouldn’t I?
The only kiss,
the one that makes desire rise
is the one that departs,
in haste or not,
and slips from your lips
until their absence is sure.
I am every woman,
every one, except her.
The soul’s composition
was always a canvas
empty, awaiting its destiny:
to be colored.
Interest became a Minotaur,
that incited me to cross you.
Your heart against mine
is a battle with no fields
and no time.
There will never be, yes,
never, two paradises alike
nor two desires the same;
since nothing and no one
are born from the same fire.
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