The last time you saw him,
you begged for the kind of
forgiveness that expects
nothing at all to change, or
the kind of forgiveness that
will still bring you home
beneath moonlight and traffic lights
of the city where you learned him.
You were drunk and stole his cellphone
and it was the least important
of all that he thinks you have hidden.
You once mastered understanding
what he sees, hears, thinks and acts on,
but the last time you saw him, it
nearly failed (until the morning when
he squeezed you, reminiscent of
him teaching you to find ripe kiwis.)
But in the dark, his face was empty.
There was absence in the eyes that once
begged for yours
(but yours
were out of focus
never could you focus.)
Leaning, becoming one with a concrete wall
In a hot Juney haze you finally felt it- freedom!
Sweet and lonely freedom! It is something that will not
drive across the country and let you choose every song,
or walk to the laundromat when it’s cold in Brooklyn.
It will not worship your body even when you’re putting on shoes,
or cook a grilled cheese when you’re sick in New Brunswick.
No, it will not be kept a secret.
So you left him three times and finally it feels a little real.
You left to keep on moving
to continue growing and going,
to create
the way women do,
yet on these nights
you are so still.
You sleep in beds around the corner if
somewhere strange at all.
You meet moments of deciding.
Do you disrupt time’s remedy?
Do you pick surgically at the scab?
Pry open all that you closed so tight?
Or do you let things be?
There is never any certainty
so you idle, you merely
consider how dangerous both will be.
Kate Devine 