You Look For Someone

You look for someone
coalesced enough
to seem at least

to have an outline –
and an inner life –
discernible consistency –

the bright illusion, anyway,
of self-sufficiency –
free-standing, mobile

limbs and eyes and lips
which fill with eager
prospects of exerting agency:

which promise something
like a recognizable
existence: someone

you would know a mile away.
You look for somebody
who’d look for you.

You tell yourself
you never look for anyone
but that’s not true.

.