soon you'll be nothing but the buzz of love, the ache, the fever

You lie on the sofa all day, washed in fog,
your heart twittering like a thrush among prickly branches.
You think you're that last black tree before the beach, the one
that trembles so close to the cliff edge it seems to have
one toe in the abyss. ...

Your toes are dissolving like that, your whole body
melting and thinning, becoming transparent, becoming
the room, the sofa, the fog, the twittering inside.

It's the love sickness! It's the damned old nausea
of desire, the ague that shakes the last right angle
of reason from your bones
and turns the world to stupid
metaphors for passion.

You peer through the fog like a nearsighted hiker
on a stony seaside path.
Your toes and knees are gone, and the rest of you
dissolving fast: soon you'll be nothing
but the buzz of love, the ache, the fever.

And now, out there, where a window once was,
you think you see the face of the one you love!
It shines toward you like a tiny moon
on a misty night, or a lucky penny,
or a pale expensive sugar candy.

[Sandra Gilbert {1936- }, 'The Love Sickness' from Kissing the Bread]