By Ali
Date: 2007 Sep 17
Comment on this Work
[[2007.09.17.20.34.4695]]

Closer

I know
all the heartbreak games
that lovers, sometimes absentmindedly, play--
the whisper of other people's secrets,
offered with breaths upon a shared pillow.

It's the little shared things, really,
like how a man takes his coffee,
like how a woman stands just so,
or that time, back in tenth grade
(you know the one),
inside jokes, for sure--
free-slipping details
in the dark, sheets of un-harbored secrets.

And it all brings us closer,
and closer still-these things we know
that we think no one else does.
Wildly, we assume that no one else could possibly
understand, not like this--beyond the curves
of a body, the yearning of a touch--
beyond reason
and all resistance.

He tells me things
and I listen.  In a way,
I'm collecting someone else's secrets,
while, somewhat ironically,
making a few of my own.