I feel your shame in me as a dance;
navigating with words to meander past tables hosting hungry bodies, silently. Your vocabulary crops me out of pictures. Your language erases me from the past as it is happening. You speak through me as I stand in front of you.

"Are you ashamed of me?", I'd ask, weeks later when
we haven't talked still.
We haven't talked more.
We haven't talked anymore.

[I'm in a bad way thinking about
pretty girls
&
red lips that say "good bye",
if they say anything at all.]

So some nights we lay on our sides,
and other nights we lay on our backs,
and all the other nights we sleep anxiously.
****.
No, I sleep anxiously