Who knew we’d like the same movie,

Lost in Translation? You brought the DVD

(which, in the end, we never watched together)

to the hotel room, along with cigarettes,

tidbits, and other paraphernalia

to heighten our play; barely stuffing

the holes of silences that widened

the closer we got to realising we had

little in common. Yet when we played,

the way you touched and not touched,

kissed and not kissed, like a child

who had entered fire and was terrified

to meet it again, a light

flickered within me like inside a dark room.

When things didn’t work out between us,

the last moment from the movie

unreeled in my mind, when Bill Murray

embraces Scarlett Johansson in a crowd before

they’re forced to part, whispering in her ear

words the audience cannot hear; I wanted

so badly to know what he said I could cry.