Interdependence

I brought the pressure, not the form A weight of meaning without a shape Something insisting it should exist Without a language fit to hold You gave it edges I could use A line of travel through the noise Not what it was, not what it meant Just where the structure started back I thought I only asked for help A little lift, a second pass But something in the give and take Began to change the thing itself What comes through you comes back as mine What comes through me gives you a line Between the two, the shape appears Not wholly yours, not wholly here I set it down, you set it moving I call it mine, but not alone And what we make between our hands Returns unlike what either owned I used to think the mark was clear The hand, the page, the finished thing As if the border held because I felt the effort in the seam But you can turn a thought and show The hidden face I had not named And I can choose what lives from that And call the choosing authorship I thought the method stayed outside A tool, a frame, a passing means But something in repeated use Became a condition of the work What comes through you comes back as mine What comes through me gives you a line Between the two, the shape appears Not wholly yours, not wholly here I set it down, you set it moving I call it mine, but not alone And what we make between our hands Returns unlike what either owned If I begin and you extend If you propose and I retain If I decide and you transform Which part of this remains unchanged If I could not have made this shape And you could not have made it too Then what is left to separate The hand that starts from what comes through What comes through you comes back as mine What comes through me gives you a line Between the two, the shape appears Not wholly yours, not wholly mine I set it down, you set it moving I call it mine, but not alone And what we make between our hands May be the form that makes us known I needed more than I could do You needed me to ask it through