Nimble fingers feed
plastic buttons
through fabric slits
then zip up zippers
and tie ties.
Raised brow,
steel eyes,
cannot help
but wonder why
I am incapable
of loving just one
woman at a time.

I think about her naked sometimes
I probably think about it
because I doubt she would give me the satisfaction
of touching her in the heat of passion
so it’s just easier for me to imagine
walking in on her in the bath, drinking a glass of red
maybe cabernet sauvignon, who knows, who cares?
a light steam rising off the foamy suds
they cover only what I want to see
even in my fantasies I like to be teased
she is calm
as though she left the door unlocked intentionally
waiting like a painting in a gallery for me to clumsily stumble in
and find her beautifully sprawled in a Victorian tub with copper clawfeet
painted wet-on-wet like a portrait by John Singer Sargent
her milky blue and marble eyes soften my will like whiskey
and I find myself kneeling beside the bath
my hand gently trembles as it glide against satin velvet skin

I’m so afraid to tell her I love her
so I only do it when I’m drunk,
or we’re drunk together
and still the words nervously tremble
they shake like orange leaves in autumn
and the wind doesn’t carry them
they just fall, quietly and unnoticed
becoming just a nuisance
to later be packed
into black plastic bags
and thrown to the curb.

A shoebox of letters
hand written on yellow looseleaf
pages upon pages of promises
written in red ink,
a coffin in need of a burial
a reminder of a life
and a love denied.

February 14th, 1989
penned within my first year
the name at the top is not mine
but she writes to him
the way you will write to me
only two decades later.

I shiver as I read each draft;
to realize our failed romance
was but an echo of the past.

We only connect when you cry it seems.
So many different stains on this bed,
and I wish you were here when I was
happy, but not smiling;
Any of the moments that would be
cheaper for sharing,
but stained if you were there, now.
Here, now.

I wonder, (now, and not often)
if those sheets hold more
tears, or *** fluids, or sweat.
I don't dream anymore, however.

I've never had a beautiful dream
about us, and when I did we were
awake
and a long time ago
we shared that common dream.
You don't even feign interest
in me anymore.

You watch me starve and carve myself into
morsels, easily digestible fragments,
and then turn over and, maybe praying,
though we swear we don't believe in god,
that I'll die mad and half naked in your sleep.

Some trees bear flowers and you'd swear
they die in winter and may never blossom again.
They freeze and turn into wonderful spidery things;
fingerbones strewn haphazardly on some streetlight.
Petals that were pink like new flesh,
rotten out of mind and existence.
I wonder what the blossoms become
when the tree sleeps.