Hanae Jonas

DELINQUENTS

I placed myself outside of mystery.

Then before you I was a stone

stopped at a steep edge, hard
in my feverish control.

Did I miss you immediately
or never,

you who I felt immediately
I should look away from?

In an unmysterious world, the answer
would always be never.

Never: a world without symbols
or indecent intuition, this

nothing, this public space.

Trust nothing—

You said clarity is an illusion.
I said illusion’s an accessory

to crime. Suddenly

I was peering into a familiar
abandoned room,

an alarming privacy waiting inside.

I wanted
to surrender speech: I wanted you
to pull the words out from in me.

If ever I called myself safe, I was a liar.

I, who believed myself finally
impermeable to omens,

the tired jailer of so much trouble,

the old symbols piled up
around me
like bills—

I left them but they didn’t leave me.

No, the world will not leave me be.

HANAE JONAS is a poet from Vermont. Her work has appeared in Iowa Review, jubilat, Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, and ZYZZYVA.