I tried to avoid myself, one day.

Dodged mirrors, glossy cupboards,
The computer till the screen lit.

Tried not to see the body
Always bordering my vision
-Especially sitting down-
So I wandered the house
Madly
Slamming hands and feet
Against door-jambs, window-bars,
To make it stop following me,
Leave me alone.

But she was always there-
I, I should say- Always
Watching when I turned my eyes
Ever so slightly, to check.

But the pain I caused
Made me hurt;
Wondering, I
Washed my grazed knee,
And said, There-there,
And felt better,
And looked up, to see
Nobody watching.

Sitting at breakfast.

Us, in our bermudas and other
Appropriate holiday clothes,
Them with anything on that
They could find, even nothing
If nothing came to hand.

Us rubbing our full bellies,
Content with the obscene amounts of breakfast
That we ate, smug in the conscious innocence
Of our chosen pleasures,
While they, with the plates of connoisseurs,
Go back and forth under our scrutiny,
Too many women in this couple,
Too many tattoos in that one,
The races suspicious in that family of four.

And yet it is we who are the weak ones, I think;
Fearful, though we too want the company,
Sex, comfort; defensively smug
Because the only other thing to do would be envy
That they went out and asked, got, laid,
While we sat here and smothered ourselves
With cheap clothes and tourist-spot snaps,
And some of ourselves, to prove we'd been,
And peered into strip-clubs, sideways, on our way past,
And speculated.