Full of noise and lust they fled the city for the shore
-Graham Foust
We fell asleep in the early morning
The blinds hastily half-assed
Sunbeams peaking onto our faces
She stole the comforter
And I woke up shivering
Clutching fiercely to a sheet
We had lay there talking
My Fingers pacing the length of her leg
A smile blurred by rum and weariness
By noon we were back to back
Dreams drifting us apart
Once entwined we had deviated to the edges
As friends, I had always let her sleep a little longer,
So she could wake up to pots banging in the kitchen
And pretend I had spent the night on the couch
But we had teetered over the precipice
Children dancing on train tracks
Whispers that had not faded with the buzz
She remained the same creature as last night
Slender, proud, stubborn. Even in sleep
Her hair her smell her lips. The same
And I remained the same
My desire my fear my feelings
But much had changed
And I’m afraid we went somewhere
But left our spirits behind
To follow footsteps quickly sinking in the sand
All the warm words lost their meaning in the afternoon
When I woke up cold and alone in a bed of two
And I wish we could have swallowed our feelings with the booze
Seawater stiffens cloth long after its dried.
As pain after it's ended stays in the body:
A woman moves her hand oddly
because her grandfather passed through
a place he never spoke of. Making
instead the old jokes with angled fingers.
-Jane Hirshfield
Eros, you son-of-a-bitch why can't I have them all??
