On Sunday Morning

New Age music drones from your retro kitchen
radio as we talk through the aftermath of our first
and only date. Over fair trade coffee, organic scones
and hand-rolled cigarettes, we convince ourselves
there is no spark between us. You claim to know
me too well, say our familiar ease makes it seem
as if we've already been married for fifteen years.
My jeans stick to the rug burns on my knees,
your robe, I imagine, to the raw spot on your tailbone.
It's good we're lying to ourselves about all this
in a way that allows us to laugh when I remind you
we at least had one hell of a honeymoon.

I rise to shrug on my leather and leave us as is.
You rise with me, as if I'd just asked you to snatch
up my lapels and kiss me with all the passion
of our failure. The blind date that began last night
with us shooting pool in a steak house bar and my eyes
devouring the unfurling of your long body beneath
that smoky cone of light you leaned through ends
right here with the play of our shadows pressing
into one another along your yellow kitchen wall.

There is who we try to be and there is who we are:
a man with one foot over the threshold of a door
that opens into this goodbye; a woman chewing
on his lip and saying everything he wants to say
so much better as she whispers to him between kisses
I never should have told you that I don't eat meat
or date men who wear leather.



(first published in Slipstream # 28)