Three Seconds

What’s my relationship
With that woman
Walking next to me
On the footpath

Unknown to me
Beside me for three seconds
Then she turns one way
And I the other

Had she been related
To me
We would have kept walking
Together, for longer

Is relationship —
A function of time spent
With someone

If I get married, and after five minutes
Leave my spouse
Are we related —
Or if I have a child
I never live with
Are we related

Do I have a relationship
With someone
Some place, some thing
I never see
Never enter, never know

I have never seen
Never lived inside —
My heart and brain
Not even for three seconds
What relationship do I have
With this body

What is relationship — if not
Fiction, made of words
Imbibed with emotions
Propped by systems
A lens that’s worn

Or else, a number without end
Every object in relationship
With every other
Innumerable, unseen
Relationships

Without the lens
I see —
But there’s no I that sees
Nor is any relationship
Seen

Seeing through the lens
The body responds —
With a word, or action
To what’s seen

Like an allergic reaction
A wheal forming
To a bite
Or nettle sting

The lens that causes
The allergic reaction
In me —
Was not there, in those three seconds
No reaction, no relationship happened

With spouses, children, parents
Familial bonds —
Always seeing through the lens
A lifetime of sensitisation

I induce the allergic reaction
Like a reverse inoculation

A perinatal condition
Meant to be a prop — to secure
Life’s continuity

Now concretised —
Turned into a crutch, enshrined
Entombed
In houses, associations
Communities
Nations

Generating reactions
In us
And distorting
What’s seen

So much
That we can no longer
See our parents, siblings and children —

As they are
As they truly are