The triptych of relation:

I-It
I-You
I-Thou

In the first
we calcify the living into neat objects
pin butterflies to corkboards
with taxonomic precision
all wings, no flight

what machinery turns a person to a thing?
what alchemy reverses this transmutation?

Thou
Spoken/unspoken
curious
smiling

Caught betwixt fingertips stretched across
that joyous space where two
might touch without
touching

I see your eyes: not as windows blocking
but doorways
each pupil dilating into otherness

to utter “Thou” felt is to stumble into
a fresh grammar of encounter
a syntax of trembling beyond expectation

the word fractures reassembles
a new constitution
It is sticky
it holds
how to speak this relation when our voices
are taught the language of categorisation

we move through mirrors of faces
surveillance for utility (I-It)
for familiarity (I-You)
rarely for divinity (I-Thou)

the most radical act:
to resist the flattening of another’s dimensions
to refuse the mirror that returns only what we seek
to smash the mirror and see a face in the fragments

look again here in this uncomfortable present
your wholeness meets mine
neither object nor projection

for Martin Buber