Words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. —John Locke

Are you talking to me? Are you writing to me?
Answers to questions you pitch into the dark
are meanings I assign to the questions you ask.

Always, you and I, will be at opposite ends
of a half-lit hallway where echoes are as urgent
as the tremulous confessions we burden ourselves

with each time we look into our reflections
on the one-way mirrors we look into when hiding
hurts hurled like hunting knives at target trees.

When I call you, I mean to quickly hold you down,
to find your voice, to shape your feelings, to own
your thoughts, to mould you as I want to have you.

I interpret you through my own lenses and mirror
you as you would me and have our confluence
in this reflection, a dragging into a dungeon

of thought constructing meaning instead of finding
it, and the “You” becomes the “I” held in bondage.
Except than in this conquest, I lose everything.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-20-11