The Fire Between Pronouns — Am I, then, entirely broken somewhere within? There, the moon tells me: I cannot give you light. Darkness clutches at me; desires, ripening toward their own ruin— but what if you take the staircase away? At the feet of the staircase, all my longings lie restless, beseeching. And the shadow? What becomes of the shadow? Beneath the shadow: a depth, an intimacy, an immeasurable fatigue. No, no—I am speaking of you, really. You. You are not here? And yet, clutching at the hem of your garment, I remain—this I, this impossible remainder of myself. If I reach out my hand, what am I reaching into? You—or fire? Or is the reaching itself forbidden? Or the moment my hand extends, are you the one imprisoned? No. I do not know. No, no, no—none of this has any value for me. I know that freedom from the prison is imminent. And yet, can one ever be liberated from a bond? From light into darkness, from darkness into the primordial dark, from that darkness into the forest, from the forest into the leaf, from the leaf into the bird, from the bird into the branch, from the branch into— I do not know. But that does not mean I will stop. It does not mean I will hide my face. It does not mean I will fold my hands and remain seated in silence. Nor will I renounce my kiss, my touch, my body, that immense hunger within me— I will set it all, all of it, ablaze, until I become luminous enough to see you. Your I and my you— two pronouns crossing the borders of the self, two flames discovering that they were never separate— the same fire, the same burning, the same impossible confluence.