II.
Your arms were so strong,
sporting manicured muscles with no point but sculpture.
I am aesthetic too.
That lovely boy-smell was intensified after
you'd been chiseling yourself in the gym.
Ah, Monsieur Contradiction makes this his asset,
using this as another tool in his yummy-boy arsenal, and sweeps us
off our feet, us girls, talking about the UN
and fitting himself with fake vampire fangs.
I spent dark evenings in wait, in want, hounding myself
to look at the time, where were you all those minutes?
Who were you really?
And who did I become when your musculature enveloped my awe-struck form
one last time before summer--after which I thought you were off overseas?
III.
When next I saw you, it wasn't eight months later;
you stayed in the country after all.
(Which messed with my head, you who never knew how important absence is...)
Anger and confusion and an
unchecked longing to touch you
engulfed me in bitterness.
And when you got me drunk
I passed out briefly, propped against your chest
While you flirted over my head.
My lower back tried not to crush your hand,
which supported me in leaning;
I felt the cold floor quickly when you
leaped to your feet at the first suggestion of your object of attention.
I had my spinning head in hand, next to the vodka.
I had you at my side days later at lunch;
you fell against me, exhausted, and I supported you then.
A nap in your pasta was not recommended.
You made me fall in love with you at that table, with your trust, the responsibility of caring for you forced upon me.
I hated, and clung to your memory in my tears.
IV.
Gifts three you presented to me as I turned twenty.
An introduction~~to a new friend who I would not part with for anything.
The gift of happiness~~material goods were made sublime in the spirit, but I was grateful for more reasons (and gifts) than one.
Yourself~~your presence fed me: massages, tousling of hair, gentle gnawings on my wrist, kisses on my hands
That was the best birthday I ever spent, and it lasted for so many nights.
V.
I made the mistake of resisting change
and instituting it as well.
I tried to tell you that I should get over you,
but you didn't want to know I loved to begin with.
Suspicion drove you away from your friend..
Jealousy crept up to me in the form of my younger, cuter alter-ego.
I didn't own you anywhere but within myself;
The fear of losing you there too was frightening.
I know only what you told me in kindly warning weeks before
--that you didn't date good friends, you were elsewhere enamored--
and how I felt when it was understood as a premonition...
And then I couldn't stand to be next to you.
If you hugged me, I rolled out from under your arm,
smiling terribly in accusing, alarmed apology, as though you could read my mind,
to explain why I hated you.
And when you threw yourself on me
in the presence only of your gift-friend,
sitting in the room where my happiness used to live--
I let you drape yourself like a baby in my lap.
I smiled bemusedly at the wise man nearby
As your everything comfortably lived with me in oneness.
I was unhappy, accepting, tired, and sad.
It was the beginning of the end of the end,
the end to any us which might have been.
VI.
Another separation, due to the winter season.
I asked you to visit me;
I missed you, having seen you every day,
and then three or four times per week,
gradually less.
I asked you to visit.
We could give farewell embraces
or handshakes, or
even exchange sidelong glances for my satisfaction,
inarticulate in any other communication.
You never came.
This is why I can never touch you again.
Your turn to break the trust! and this time it was done so deliberately.
Your message got across.
Now, sadness and cold are mine, in a jealousy robbing me of power and hope,
possessing without rationale or concern my bruised little heart.
And that organ yearns for freedom;
but in the meantime, my skin
will always yearn
for yours.