Under the weight of this night | 1 |
I am awake and want to sleep - | 2 |
to dream - strangers again: | 3 |
when you touched my lips | 4 |
with your tongue, they opened. | 5 |
I wasn't aware that I wanted you. | 6 |
| |
Looking back is inevitable: | 7 |
I was her, with wrap-around skirts, | 8 |
just enough woman for your taste. | 9 |
You surrounded yourself with friends | 10 |
bad-mouthing man-looking dykes; | 11 |
you, the androgynous woman, | 12 |
bra-less in hippy dress, | 13 |
were never anyone's lover. | 14 |
We'd read poetry until | 15 |
I discovered martinis and Zen. | 16 |
When you laughed at me | 17 |
I expected it, perhaps needed | 18 |
to know I could remain | 19 |
a stranger to you. | 20 |
| |
Those were short nights | 21 |
when you'd take me in your mouth | 22 |
and make me come | 23 |
apart in soundless screams; | 24 |
I would tie you | 25 |
to your greedy passions, | 26 |
and watch how easy it was | 27 |
to love yourself. | 28 |
| |
(the weather is changing; | 29 |
the wind chimes rattle | 30 |
like ghosts in chains.) | 31 |
| |
It is an early morning reflection | 32 |
when cool breezes brush | 33 |
sticky thighs, and the grey mist | 34 |
is an hour's distance. | 35 |
| |
I watch you sleep, left breast | 36 |
tattooed with black roses | 37 |
growing and wilting, | 38 |
then again. | 39 |
| |
I could wake you and tell you all this, | 40 |
but when you rise from your dreams | 41 |
finding nothing has been interrupted, | 42 |
the excuses will start; the reasons | 43 |
are less important than the leaving. | 44 |
| |
These small points of recognition | 45 |
show me nothing that I have need for, | 46 |
nothing that I can put a name to. | 47 |
| |
I pretend love, for now, | 48 |
I am not afraid of you. | 49 |
Tomorrow I will re-invent us. | 50 |