Un(ravelling)

Revisiting a poem that I came across last year, incidentally written by an MA candidate at NTU whom I had the pleasure to be briefly acquainted with. It had a pretty lasting impression on me and I can still enjoy it at every reading, as if it's the first time again.

i
Separated by the partying crowd, I saw
you mouthing consonants and vowels to me
I had to stitch together to understand: I love you. 
It was only after we moved closer to each other, fighting
our way through the throng, and finally
gained the distance between us,
that I realised what you were (sooth)saying): I left you. 

ii
The things that don't matter now, they are
water under the bridge
you and I are burning
from each end. In the end,
there will only be water, but not a drop to spare
either of us from the rest
(-ive embers) of ourselves.

iii
What the water will do: dissolve
our fraying illusions into ashen dregs, in which
we can read the mystery of the kinship between
unravelling and its deceitful sibling, ravelling - twins,
whose other names are distance and desire.

- By Zhang Jieqiang