After sex we talk about the farm, and you’re beside me
breathless on your back. You look like a man catching fire, a
careful graven image on the bed, and isn’t that what we swore,
didn’t we promise past the grave?
Even so, I decide that I have to stop loving you for awhile. I don’t tell you this,
fighting the weight of faithlessness, of undecorated fear. Your blistered hands
graze the small of my back. You’re still telling me about our life,
half whispering three days of rain, of gathering earth.
I am gathering scenes. I see you rolling out to sea while I am in the garden
jealous, keeping the goats away, watching them climb the towers that you built,
kicking up our crooked dust.. I weep for you to forget your
life. I whisper it down each row of beans.
My fear is palpable. One day you will leave, the water will fill with oil, and you
not needing me, will follow other watercourses dark with kindness. I don’t feed you,
or mine for you seeds. I lie with you in the half-light. I have a delicate mouth. I write
poetry. These are ways to kindle, but I cannot
quench. You assure me like a sunrise, burning on the sheets of our bed, but there are no
roots, only rivers and three days of rain. Why do I doubt your love?
Some would die to have a man like you. I would too. What species of murder is this,
thinking twice about happiness, brooding deep ditches after sex?
Under the weight of my insanity I am tilling a red soil without you. I am pallid but brave. I am
vying for a simple kind of grief, misery the color of ivory, a worry I can see, but I am in the red field
without you. Who will protect me now? Who will make my dry mouth water? I search you, I
examine the canyon of your chest, run my finger across your mouth.
You turn and press your damp body against me. I’m not going to tell you how alone I feel. I let you
unzip me. I let you look at me naked in this path of light.
***I need help with a title. Any suggestions? Preferably it would allude to the fact that its an ABC poem, but I don't know how to do that gracefully.
