egocentric

to get over somebody
they must die inside you

your mourning of them must be
completely selfish

a building burns,
and we immediately begin
to talk about ourselves
what we were near it
who we were because of it
what it did to us.

our world is a million
non-intersecting egocentric
frames

our house burnt down too,
we say
it was yy years ago,
oh the smell of ash!
connecting word to word
memory to memory, mapping
one by one, the bricks
of the same unreal landscape

someone's death,
or their absence
is really all about you
and your longing.