Can we just be **** buddies
instead of lovers?
Perhaps if I just met you;
if we were just two strangers at a bar
open to company
while seeking solitude;
a bad week drowning in snifter after snifter
so, too, inhibitions washed away in a flood of whiskey
until we’re making eye contact
until let me introduce myself
until conversation is more suggestive glances than speaking
until our lips are too preoccupied for conversation
until we’re in a fight with self-control in the back seat of a taxi
until we’ve lost the fight in my bed
until it’s the morning after
until “I don’t want to date but we should do that again.”
Maybe then.
Except I didn’t just meet you at a bar.
Except we are not strangers
but suddenly this bed feels strange to me.

Can we just be **** buddies
instead of lovers?
As if our adventures were just
mundane check-marks on a to-do list;
as if your sunshine-smile isn’t the catalyst
to photosynthesis of happiness in my heart;
as if I didn’t express it at least once daily from the moment
I discovered I loved you 900 days ago;
as if I only cared to expose your flesh and not your dreams;
as if I only love you for the parts you beg me to enter;
as if I could touch you without stacking up plans for our future together
like building blocks, so tall the Berj Khalifa would be jealous;
as if after all we’ve shared, I could settle with being just a stain on your sheets.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I said I’d give you anything but you’ve proven me a liar.

And like Jenga we collapse,
only you made the damning move but I
sleep in our ruins, the loser.

Three years together but still
you’re the lover I never had