Valentine's Eve
it is not the way in which I livethat makes me tired
it is not the lack of sleep
or food
or the excess of cigarettes and caffeine
it is not your eyes
that make me lower mine
down the length of your body to the floor.
it is simply the way in which I breathe...
collecting oxygen for the next time
I dive down too deep.
I am tired
of gasping.
so there are certain things I would like to say to you
certain things I should say to you
but I won't say to you
what I would like to
it's not appropriate to talk now
it's not appropriate to walk now
so maybe I shouldn't balk now
but I'd rather just go now.
you gave me a book of walt whitman poetry
and so what am I supposed to do with it?
read it? that would be the easy answer.
but I can't finish a line without thinking
about you.
before--
before everything happened, you know what happened, you remember even though we were both drunk and tired and we haven't spoken about it since--
I used to inhale the book and thus your scent
it interupted my reading, the inhalation, but it was better
than reading, getting high off of you.
after--
after everything happened, you know what's gone on since then, you remember how you ignored me at first and now you look at me differently and I still want you just as bad as I did Before, but now I want you twice as bad because it was so perfect--
I can't concentrate because I think of you, I think of what it was like.
I don't think of the flimsy torn pages under my fingers
I think of you under my fingers, your nipples and your skin
and your tongue and your hair and all your boy parts
and I can't concentrate on walt whitman poetry
but I am not ready to give the book back, yet.
so don't expect me to, because one of these days
I am going to forget all the subtext
I am going to look back on you and you will be all faded
and then I will sit down
and I will get drunk
and I will read walt whitman, word for word, ten times in one night
and I will remember you
the way your fingers feel, the way you kiss
and I will understand.
