Unconsciously conscious,*
her skirt too short.
tugging it down pointlessly,
every second minute,
like a regular breathe,
all the eyes in the room
rode it up,
and rode the tugging
down too.

that she was pretty,
pleasure for the eyes,
was not the question.

no longer young pretty, but
fulsome, knowing, more,
knowledgable in her place,
secure in her thirties.

or so I thought.

an Anne Fontaine blouse,
silk and collar cut angled,
Italian leather skirt from Barney's,
and legs that were not
just shapely,
but pouted comely,
come love me, I am lovely.

or so I thought.

the skirt, a leather glisten,
seams so thin, almost invisible
to the eye,
like the lines nearest
her eyes,
but all lost,
because all
only saw,

the tugging.

I ponder it,
the meaning,
of the tugging,
consciously unconscious.

was she tugging herself
back inside older younger dreams,
back to where she once unconsciously belonged,
or forward to this moment where she was conscious,
a line crossed, and needy to be tugged back behind it.

my eyes did not depart from her thighs
for she was tugging me as well,
in two directions, into a place
where questions tugged at me,
and I too, consciously unconscious
that I no longer belonged where I belonged,

or so I thought.