Weekend of Three.

I wake never entirely knowing not how to begin

Only having this want, which began as a feeling 

And is to say, its sense was less, but all the same 

Was persistently pressing, enticing nerves while paralyzing others

Willing an effect, to be passionately disturbed, 

Pleasurably, if the feeling got the best of me!

Certainly it is difficult knowing

What is it I want most, which I need now?

Often I come out of sleep

Finding some body, forgotten 

Moments before, during dream, he wasn’t on my mind. 

In instants I need reminding,

The relation of him to eye.

Mind backpedaling through memory’s rolodex. 

This not being a scene 

Where I hadn’t known him or forgotten lines

But rather, misplaced ourselves. 

Over a minute of fear, a time resistant to time, 

I want to be with him but I also need him to go.

Men are all different, it is hard to see

Taking time’s challenges to know, I’ve learned

Which doesn’t mean I am now godlike 

Predicting how each human heart will take to me.

But still I can wish

They knew how I act in indecision 

Never entirely knowing not how to begin.

Why I withdrew from the face I preferred to kiss again

Stressing distance in spite of attraction.

Not even explaining why on Sunday 

I need to snort amphetamines before noon

Spending Manhattan’s most marveled day

In a bubble wrap, working on self-imposed assignments. 

Watching him go even now is confusing, but it’s also impossible

To say I only experience ecstasy when bodies are outside of mine

Admitting his penis pursing dimensions is stimulating

Corporeally, but not cerebrally, which is what I need.

Yet when the morning catches me off guard

In a past lover’s arms my eyes unlatch 

Only to wish they hadn’t, he can feel 

Me, wasting away, blood draining through my sewer’s veins.

Drawing arms tighter against my heart

Happily whispering, “Has Sleeping Beauty woken?”

Do I wish I never would, but instead betray us both

Answering “I’ll never feel this bed again, if I don’t get up…”

But remembering the line, he interrupts, “I guess you want me to go.”

Yes, kissing me anyway, which makes me feel

Bad, but can’t change 

Last Friday when waking against a shoulder, a patchwork of moles,

I heard a breathing body and tried to pinch it breathless

Only to scare him out of sleep and have me reach for his clothes.

Words following him out the door, nothing clear or definitely real,

Just speech slipping saying he had to work, had to write, had to go.

Even in my nightgown, I was awake to what I didn’t know,

What did he want? What did he need?

But he left too quickly and abruptly to feel out any answers

And now it is Sunday, four hours after noon, 

I have all this bubble wrap but no tissue for my bleeding nose

So I’m continuing to work, needing to know what it is he wanted on Friday

Since he sounded like me, but didn’t say.