Your hand found mine

A heat where warmth should have been
A forbidden fruit, a familiar friend

You rubbed my hair I touched your knee
You called me beautiful
I knew I was weak

Mixed with passion were your apologies
I memorized your sighs

It begins and ends with tonight.

My heart breaking before my eyes 
Knowing it’s wrong but unwilling to stop
Will you ever ever forgive what we did?
I can’t wake in the morning
Without you in my life

We sleep at dawn

Coffee and toast in bed
And we wonder
How it could have been
And we’re close enough
That we can talk about it

A friendship sealed with desire
Or cracked wide open with lies?

I can never touch you again
I have to touch you again

Knowing this changes everything
Hoping this changes nothing
Hoping this changes everything

My heart screams
Choose me
Love me
Even though I know I can’t
Choose you.

This poem was written in the late 90s.

Par Avion: Air Mail

I have no understanding of your African world, with electricity three hours a day and a taxicab that comes to take you to Cotonou twice a week, should you wish to go. I have nothing to tie me to Ouidah but you, whose hardest times before now include summer nights when we slept in bras [...]

Waiting for October

I do not like writing about where I am, in this office with light gray walls that I call middle ground. Beside me sits a typewriter, covered with dust collecting since 1974 and a computer outdated in 1998 no one knows how to use. I do not like writing about a place where Joe has [...]

Unraveling

On our first date, when your face scored target on my eyes, you told me it was the best date you’d ever had because we fell asleep on each other on the couch and didn’t wake until daylight. That was two years ago, and now you have porcupine daggers in your eyes when you look [...]

It was a curvy road finding you

But when our eyes touched joined in our new world I could do nothing but stare and wonder what it would take to know you to hold you and then we said hello Cedar Mountain was ours but it couldn’t keep us You belonged to the shore but my heart was yours You were in [...]

Rekindle the wrong

The sun may rise silently above the sheltered lake but it won’t go unnoticed by those who will create darkest lies that move soundlessly away from those who hide their faces in the morning’s harsh dawn. Today I saw a demon and I knew that you were mine but I was tired and weary not suitable to [...]

Where no one has

The parking lot was empty when you pulled your sleek black Bonneville underneath a dirty street lamp that wasn’t on even though the sky was metallic gray with stabs of silver lightening. It was your dad’s car, handed down to you; you handed down to me unscented Jergens lotion you told me to put on [...]