I AM GLAD THAT YOU Poem by Peter Verhelst

We have left it all behind, for the first time in a long while we feel something,
we are going for a swim in the plain, yes, let us dive in
and after that you will lie on your back on the rock with your eyes wide open.

I thought, it was stronger than I was, what if nothing after all,
what if no-one from a different space or time, what if I wake up
and notice that you're no longer, what if ultimately absolutely nothing?

As if you lower yourself into a lake you float on your back, wide open. Your fingers move.

Surely it can't be that this…

Your fingers move. You lie deep on the bottom and coming from your mouth, from so deeply
it comes out of you, so very slowly.
I thought, I couldn't see another way, as long as she never… As long as I can ever

become something of what you want. From so deeply it comes from the corners of your eyes
and from the corners of your mouth and from your lower back,
from your stomach. Your fingertips move. Your breaking eyes.

Would you always keep doing that for me, those breaking eyes?
And those fingers.

You look, leaning on your elbows, wide open, smiling, keep
looking like that,
as if from a pupa (still wet) you can see a butterfly crawl out.