A subject is hostage - via Levinas

Walking in and sitting down,
And I am stunned that you are here;

Bare cheek catches lamplight, shone from above,
Bare heart caught, watchfulness, of person.

Stretching to infinity, this sense
of Other, in the third, apportioned
in time, in responsibility, in justice.

You do not do, you do not do,
and here I
am,
otherwise,

not me, not this, not you, not mine, not us, not ours,
and yet here,
again,
not over.

'Vulnerability, exposure to outrage, to wounding, passivity more passive than all patience, passivity of the accusative form, trauma of accusation suffered by a hostage to the point of persecution, implicating the identity of the hostage who substitutes himself for others; all this is the self, a defecting or defeat of the ego's identity. And this, pushed to the limit, is sensibility, sensibility as the subjectivity of the subject. It is a substitution for another, one in place of another, expiation'. ~ Levinas, Otherwise than Being