No Longer Numb Poem by Eila Mahima Jaipaul

cut off from you
I end up a small
damaged thing
never to be returned
to the original nature of being.

sexual love and spiritual experience
engaged in the activity of union
become some distortion of
fundamental longing,
as if you'd picked the eye
from a bird
and still called it a whole bird
or clipped a wing from a butterfly and attempted
to name it complete.

the magnetic pull toward you,
toward something stronger
more vital
than simply being
calls to inner life.
arousal changes into a dance with desire,
with yearning
to form a secret partnership
of possibility.