By Kevin (kev@tnw.org)
Date: 26 August 1997

Untitled

Often I turn
(yes, in half sleep)
to your ex- side of the bed,
in your ex- bed in your ex- unofficial apartment,
and in a moment of drowsy gaze
I puzzle
at the strange blankness of the spot -
the complexity of its vacancy
that the sheet is cool to touch
and smells like laundry, not you.

I remember quickly of course
and bring all those wandering parts and thoughts
back to my side, pulling sleep over me
as quickly as the blanket we once shared,
my own pillow close
almost as though it were a living thing
that still would move to meet me when
in sleep we've wandered...
share a murmur, a kiss, and comfortably fold
to the perfect complimentary shape of me.

We never were lovers in the "biblical" sense
since circumstances would not permit,
but in ways we surely were -
everything about us screamed love
from loud moments at the base of busy waterfalls
to giggly moments when we were too slow to bed
and some tender moments when we arrived
at what I may always refer as we did, rather sheepishly
as our "downtown area."
We were silly, and by some standards even chaste,
but we were still lovers I think
in this bed.

I learned a lot of things while I got to love you,
beautiful lessons in laughter and bittersweet tears
that by day may bring either to my face, or both;
but at night when I study what I've learned
a bit less objectively,
what I remember best from our first lesson in love
is the newer lesson,
in lack.