Néfer

by Victoria Livingstone

     The first time
     I didn’t know you.
     The second time, I did
          — Federico Garcia Lorca

I fell for you, into you, fell
into the muddy water that flows
through you and gurgles up to your river eyes.
But that wasn’t you.

You knew me, drank me in from the beginning,
thirsty from one meeting, recognized
in childhood photos
my sad blue depth.

And then I met you on land, met you in the wide
fish eyes of other women, in their open fish mouths,
in their wet bodies that had also opened
to your muddy flow.

You didn’t know me.  I like to think you didn’t
know me.  Know me now, not as a quietly drowning
child but as an amphibious creature, able to surface
and walk away.