Cavitation

I dig like a madman for saccharine pain -
a glimpse of that face in a photograph,
or the crowded space of a subway car.

I tear through blank nights, and canvas the life,
painting visions on unknown cheekbones
marking strangers, straining for likeness.

And I find it, inevitably, in familiar haunts,
twining amongst the tangled threads
of tenuous possibility past,

while one smile, on those softest lips
plays a song of cavernous longing,
and, writhing, dances douleur equise.