Today I am a tourist
In romance, her swaying hair
Across my lap
She showed me this long night
And I bit into it

Laughing loudly and aroused
Not for sensation, but for feeling
She showed me the stages of joy

We folded our lives
As we folded laundry together
Ate our meals in complete comfort
The interior of thirsty years
Of suffering, made worth it

In a few months of purest joy
Loving her was like a Jewish legacy
Of an expression of American hope

I could hope I belonged
But romance usually had a way of
Burning my letters at a bonfire
For a muse I couldn’t have
So much color, so much sadness

So many postcards from
The women I believed I loved
Thus I remember your face everywhere

Like a poet infatuated
With the idea of love
Who has some difficulty
Recognising her at “face level”