In Budapest I’d take a lover,
We’d meet outside a ruin bar,
And I’d notice as we stumbled
On the cobblestones
He walked beside me and not ahead.
And we’d **** on cotton sheets
On a twin-sized mattress
In a hostel full of friends
I haven’t met yet
While the city pulses outside
In an unruly procession.
He spoke into my wild hair
That until we must leave Budapest,
We would be wed.
I asked him what would become of us
The next day.
A smile plays on his lips, bemused
With the taut delicacy of stringing a harp,
He tells me, “we will part.”
And I’ve never known a kinder partner
Or a gentler fate
That feels like the dissolution of sea foam
Rather than the crashing of a wave
Threatening to drown you.
He would tell me he loved me
And it was easier to believe from
Someone I’ve known an hour
Than someone I’ve known a year.
We didn’t leave bed the next day until
Late afternoon.
We kissed simply and quietly
And yet it drowned out the whispers of the Danube
We clung to each other’s sides
The way a cobweb sticks to the sleeve of a sweater
Sure, soft, and smothered.
The next day I had a bus to catch
And tired eyes.
We checked out quietly and held hands
Until I had to go right
And he had to go left
And we did so with one last caress and kiss
And that was that
And it was the greatest love I had ever known
And I wonder if it were because of him
Or because the future wasn’t around
To complicate it
And that I didn’t know the difference
Between loving with abandon
Or without it.