Like Albert Camus's Mersault, I Grow More Detached, Distant From You, Careless Love, As Days Pass: I Am Nothing Like You Poem by Dennis Ryan

Wednesday morning, February 14,2024 at 7: 24 a.m.

—once again, this poem is for Rameeza Nasim, of Karachi, Pakistan, the person to whom it is spoken

"The curious feelings of the son for his mother constitute the whole of his sensibility."
—Albert Camus, the French Algerian writer, speaking on his own artistic sensibility.

One day I am enamored of you, the next day not—
sometimes going back and forth on the same day—
when considering your various behaviors on display
in these poems, finally not caring about you one way
or the other, becoming totally detached, and indifferent:
you live your life; I live mine; live separate lonely lives.
(Only the power of mind, that weakness, makes us one.)
It is this detachment I value right now—I live like Mersault,
who lived his daily life among French Algerians and Arabs, sometimes sitting on his second-story balcony watching
events unfold on the busy streets below, Algiers', acting
indifferently to them, to his job, his girlfriend, to the death
of "maman" in Marengo—smoking cigarettes during vigil—
finally opening himself up to the indifference of the sky,
the universe—it's an indifference that I share, yet find
wanting as I myself am wanting in so many ways except
for my ability to love, to care, to give and to share at times,
In certain instances. I am much my mother as I have told
you when you tell me nothing about your family, hide fact,
evade truth by omission—just one more way of lying—which
is your preferred way of dealing with me. So be it; you make
your choices, and I, in response, make mine—like Mersault,
I grow detached, distant, far away from you as days pass—
your present involvement with police to undo me the biggest
difference-maker. Now, like you, akin to you, I care not for
you careless love, careless. Like you? I am nothing like you.