Under the pine trees, we'd lie in the shade and make up excuses for why we couldn't return home.

It isn't safe there, spend the night with me and confess that I'm aging like wine and not withering and rotting away.

Take me to your childhood home with your hidden retreat where you feed the ducks, gazing contently into the water and not thinking of the stepfather who with his meatlike hands would drown you beneath the lake's serenity.

Just don't leave me here like I know you're destined to –
As social convention says you should,
As I now in reflection know you will, and always must.