The heat intensifies with my lonesome tendencies, and
I fear palpitation from innocently brushing arms with a stranger.
But when I find myself in a stranger’s bed
(or a wineshop,
a car,
a park)
the thrill is missing.
I am a stereotype, a masochistic statistic. I am becoming the 20-something-sleeping-around-to-stave-off-boredom.
I am an archetype that’s been romanticized to death.
Save the romance, it’s greed and it’s hunger and it’s pure boredom.
These men become gold. Thread after thread
of secret affairs solidify into a piece of treasure,
Like 14 karat chain necklaces that get tangled
into an unfixable knot of links and claw clasps.
I carry it in my strut and that is exciting.
My walk is confidently direct at 3 in the morning.
In the summer, when the heat is outside and not in my bed, I am unsatisfied.
Yet when the promise of romance approaches, I allow myself to make poor decisions out of fear.
So I make a different poor decision to get me through the next hour.

The grocery/ wineshop

Once when he lived in Faro (Portugal) and walking about
he came across a grocer shop that was new in 1950.
As window display a packet of washing powder, fossilized
the name of the powder was Blenda, of the same type
his mother had used and tinned sardines.
He entered and was gripped by the sadness of the shop.
It was bigger than he had thought, barrels of wine, and in
a dark corner, old men sat drinking in silence.
So, it was an unofficial wine shop, a hiding place
for the aged who had resigned to their fate of elderliness.
He had a glass of red wine served by a woman older than the shop.
The wine was surprisingly good. He had another drink
and joined the men in the corner.