Conversations

I.

I walk in on her in the kitchen

 Clutching a knife in one hand

      holding her sad smile in the other.

        I watch as her eyes turn dark

     Before I open my mouth,
and pushed air between tongue and lip,

            silence
.she speaks quietly.

            “I like to watch the moonlight
as it streams in your window
  and decorates the darkest parts of you,
   the play of shadows- silvered and eerie.”

      She frowns, and even knowing
as I do, sighs.
'I revel in your secrets, in
how your touch is 

        so sincere 

and yet so-' the pause was murderous
       'so, irreverent.'

                She showed her scars then,
         wrists and forearms decorated
    with the lines of her life, her longing.
'Sometimes,' she smiled then, a melancholy movement.
     'I don’t expect you to
understand, but, sometimes
            I wish I could move in you
                  to know you from the inside

                          out.'

These Are Not My Truths, XI

XI

You told me
my choice of words
gives meaning to my past,
and clouds my future.

‘Intrusive’
isn’t exactly what you’d call it-

And I argue that it’s very nature
is intrusive,

Giggles wander down the phone lines
and I picture you grinning
holding back laughter
a veritable Yangtze dam
Until the spillways overflowed
and you couldn’t help but giggle

“But, that’s the best part!”

These Are Not My Truths, X

X

You always startle

me
with your naked
exuberance
(boxers, never briefs)

Even wearing
almost nothing
but your stupid smile
you make me feel little

(Not small, as I keep trying

to explain to you)

I told you, I don’t

‘do’

Love poems,

All you did was

Laugh at my air quotes

(Damn straight I use ‘em)

and kiss me ‘til I shut up.

When I told you, in all dread
of the missed.
 period

your eyes were happier
than I’d ever seen.
Even as you let me be
the eternal pessimist
and string theories together
of why it shouldn’t happen,
now, to us, in this world, ever…

(I can’t help but admire the strength you exude
not the outside, the muscles made strong
from years of heavy lifting
with your dad, the construction worker,
and not from the kind
the gym gives you after
too much work for me)

“Is this what it’s like
to live with your heart in your mouth?”
you murmur into my stomach
as though the bean sized…
baby
can hear.
I grin, this I understand,
(I whisper my truth, my fear
into your hair)
and reply, “Welcome
to my world. Population
two.”