Each From Different Heights
That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
of my hands
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astounded
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the longer fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.
Tenderness
Back then when so much was clear
and I hadn’t learned
young men learn from women
what it feels like to feel just right,
I was twenty-three,
she thirty-four, two children, and husband
in prison for breaking someone’s head.
Yelled at, slapped
around, all she knew of tenderness
was how much she wanted it, and all
I knew
were backseats and a night or two
in a sleeping bag in the furtive dark.
We worked
in the same office, banter and loneliness
leading to the shared secret
that to help
National Biscuit sell biscuits
was wildly comic, which lead to my body
existing with hers
like rain that’s found its way underground
to water it naturally joins.
I can’t remember
ever saying the word, tenderness,
though she did. It’s a word I see now
you must be older to use,
you must have experienced the absence of it
often enough to know what silk and deep balm
it is
when at last it comes. I think it was terror
at first that drove me to touch her
so softly,
then selfishness, the clear benefit
of doing something that would come back
to me twofold,
and finally, sometime later, it became
reflective and motiveless in the high
ignorance of love.
Oh abstractions are just abstract
until they have an ache in them. I met
a woman never touched
gently, and when it ended between us
I had new hands and new sorrow,
everything it meant
to be a man changed, unheroic, floating.
The Answers
Why did you leave me?
We had grown tired together. Don’t you remember?
We’d grown tired together, were going through the motions.
Why did you leave me?
I don’t know, really. There was comfort in that tiredness.
There was love.
Why did you leave me?
You began to correct my embellishments in public.
You wouldn’t let me tell my stories.
Why did you leave me?
She is… I don’t wish to be
any more cruel than I’ve been
You son-of-a-bitch.
Why did you leave me?
I was already gone.
I just brought my body with me.
Why did you leave me?
You found out and I found I couldn’t give her up.
I was as shocked as you were.
Why didn’t you lie to me?
I was already lying to you. It was hard work.
All of it suddenly felt like hard work.
Why did you leave me?
I wanted to try monogamy again.
I wanted the freedom to be monogamous.
You fucker. You fucking son-of-a-bitch.
Why did you leave me?
I wanted you both. I thought I could be faithful
to each of you. You shouldn’t have made me choose.
Don’t you know what betrayal is?
I never thought of it as betrayal. More like one pleasure
of mine you should never have known.
You really are quite an awful man.
Why did you leave me?
It was time to leave.
The hour of leaving had come.
Why did you leave me?
It would take too long to explain. Please
don’t ask me to explain.
Will you not explain it to me?
No, I will not explain it to you. I’ll say anything
rather than explain it to you. Even things that sound true.
Sweetness
waking with a tumor, one more maniac
and changed nothing in the world
in the ignorance of loving
hand-size, and never seeming small.
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ….
he was driving. His voice was low
the one or two words we have for such grief
as if on loan, stays just long enough
source. As for me, I don’t care