The Mail Of Steps Poem by Abbas Beydoun

In the smallest room
there's a flicker of light.
Your steps chase me to here
and my hearing follows them like a dog.
I listen
until I lose their tracks among the roads.
I turn over my hand.
I try to make a secret out of my fingers.
I close my eyes.
I try to make with my furrowed face a climate
or bread or a mask.
I swim under my own breathing.
Your steps resemble silence.
Like a sprinkling of flour on asphalt
the sellers carry them with their voices,
the lorries take them until they disappear.
They are my mail
and you'll have none of them
except this echo
as you take off your dress
where there'll be no foot steps
slowing by your door.