kate asked me to come over
to her childhood home
to meet her parents
and join their family dinner

i kept thinking, am i the type,
to bring home to mom and dad?
i am self-conscious
and i’m strange
and i wouldn’t let my daughter
date a person like me

but she insisted
that they’d love me
and they’d offered me a seat
at the head of the table

to talk about myself
and answer questions about church:
i went for 13 years and decided i hate liars..
and politics:
you’d have to be a sociopath to be a good politician..

her father had a deep guttural chuckle
with a smokey aging rasp from 40 years of
******* in the same brand of cigarettes
nestled in my front shirt pocket
i could tell he approved
in his odd, silent way

her sandy-haired mother called me
by the name
of her daughter’s ex-lover
and i couldn’t tell
if it was deliberate

but i didn’t mind
because she smiled so sweetly
and i’ve never been able to read a woman
beyond her smile
but i’ve always known
when a woman liked me

i looked at kate
and she was watching her mother and father
so closely that i thought
she may have seen something
that i missed

but then she turned to me
and smiled
and she didn’t stop
‘til we escaped to the upstairs
to **** like teenagers
in the old bedroom
across from her folks’