For Kenny, 2/14/05 |
My brain shuffles through daily tasks
like a drunk night watchman
making his rounds. Love has mashed
it to guacamole. Not even the kind
waiters make at your table
with chunky tomatoes. No, the really
mushy kind white suburban moms make.
The world has enough love poems
but that’s all I have in me, a desire
that crumbles me like feta cheese,
a love that fills the hollow
places in my aching chest.
I’ve said I love you to other faces
but never understood the power
of the words. Love was sorta
visible if I squinched up my eyes
and tilted my head just so,
like trying to see the man in the moon.
I’ve been in something before
but it wasn’t this. Never in the second
year of a relationship have I felt
my heart hum against my ribcage.
This love grips and twists, a fist hot
as sex in a summer bed.
This love has become my skin.
This love is old and new,
an estuary, bracing yet comfortable.
I throw off my towel and dive in.
copyright 2005
Leslie Maryann
Neal |