In the doorway
you face a candle
Your face a white island
between the two currents, between the
falls of your black hair
You who drank your life greedily
hole never filled
Girl-woman who could not
whose lips could not open
Hungry ghost in the doorway
Your bones might as well have flown together and spoken:
Where is she whom my heart loves?
—Oh my darling,
where do you look for me?
Jean Valentine, “The Drinker (2)” (1997)
