Do we confess to our crimes tonight?
Before I get the chance to flee,
We’ll find that we’re not quite
What we’d expected love to be.
You kiss me and I slur my words,
I get lost in streetlight.
I can’t help but stumble towards
“Could”, “Would”, and “Might”.
There’s nothing I can do;
My heart thinks it’s common sense.
My blood has traces of you,
Though we exist in the past tense.
The air hasn’t settled since you left,
Ribcage rattled, heart cleft.

I dwelt alone
             In a world of moan,
         And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride—
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.
             Ah, less—less bright
             The stars of the night
         Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
             And never a flake
             That the vapor can make
         With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie’s most unregarded curl—
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie’s most humble and careless
  curl.
             Now Doubt—now Pain
             Come never again,
         For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
             And all day long
             Shines, bright and strong,
         Astarte within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye—
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye.

     "Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
in the dark.
It's after dinner playtime.
We're outside,
hidden by trees and shrubbery.
He calls it hide-and-seek,
but only my little sister seeks us
as we hide
and she can't find us,
as grandfather picks me up
and rubs his hands between my legs.
I only feel a vague stirring
at the edge of my consciousness.
I don't know what it is,
but I like it.
It gives me pleasure
that I can't identify.
It's not like eating candy,
but it's just as bad,
because I had to lie to grandmother
when she asked,
"What do you do out there?"
"Where?" I answered.
Then I said, "Oh, play hide-and-seek."
She looked hard at me,
then she said, "That was the last time.
I'm stopping that game."
So it ended and I forgot.
Ten years passed, thirtyfive,
when I began to reconstruct the past.
When I asked myself
why I was attracted to men who disgusted me
I traveled back through time
to the dark and heavy breathing part of my life
I thought was gone,
but it had only sunk from view
into the quicksand of my mind.
It was pulling me down
and there I found grandfather waiting,
his hand outstretched to lift me up,
naked and wet
where he rubbed me.
"I'll do anything for you," he whispered,
"but let you go."
And I cried, "Yes," then "No."
"I don't understand how you can do this to me.
I'm only ten years old,"
and he said, "That's old enough to know."