Leila Chatti
When I run into friends from our past life,
they ask, they want to know
if I’ve kept track of you.
I parse the question as you would, examine its parts.
Three years since
and I feel still hunted,
your sight ever a scope,
an animal’s golden eye.
I need always to know
your exact distance—three hundred miles,
ninety-nine hours of footfalls,
one spontaneous flight—I track it the way
a gazelle on the plains
tracks the lion which hunts it,
that mutual watching,
an instinctive awareness
of space and of when
to start running.