I am with you in a room that is mine
but you've made yours
and you sing to my ear to be regretful
that I spent an afternoon on all fours.
Flicking your tongue, hissing your fits
tallying our bouts and frightful what-ifs.
It wasn't always like this.
Perhaps it was something we've both collected at the back of our heads,
like sand stuck in shell,
something difficult to swallow,
and one uneasy to forget.
The psalm begins
with the names of your life:
your son, daughters, a wife.
It was she— then he—and them,
but what of us?
But arms in a room that was mine
claimed by you.
Warm on blankets while rain taps
furiously on fogged glass
framing lightning
striking at the distant
promising grey and gloom -
humming
curtains slapped by wind
coyly foreshadowing doom.
I knew then lament
would never be futile
when thunder did not come.
Instead,
there was something in my chest
that went undone
Boom—
and there was only the scent
of sixteen and you
and gardenias soon to bloom.
Wishing of tomorrows
breathing in that same perfume.
And there I was, frightened and unlonely,
a deserted man who found oasis past mirages, Discovering for the first time,
a storm without ending.
The rain hits
the glass of the room
that seems to worship you—
a place where we're within reach.
You with your spite
and my heart contrite,
away from that desolate beach —
where I am sixteen with a soul
that is yours if you persist.
Aching and raging,
now sealed away with a kiss.
I am twenty-seven and yet again,
I am not one to resist
if you knocked to love me once more,
or refuse that I exist.
Open are the windows to my domain,
I and so are my doors.
Forever will I welcome the rain
for this cycle of lonesome
that has locked me in chains.
