And when you came, I thought it was real,

Like dreams would be a path that had come up here;

Here, fleeting like a veering wind that leaves nothing

But a brush on the surfaces of our tanned skin—

Like a harbinger of something new, you came

And when I thought I’d know what I’ve sought for years

Without respite, un-redeeming years of my unmanning

The perfume was softly gone, wafting with its very breath.

Things drift away. In the surface, they drift away,

Save their essences that unclog my belated dreams.

You came at night, when I least expected—

And when you left, a bore a child within me…

A child I have waited for centuries.