gold fish
I wind my hands up in
My cold misery,
The blue heart ventricles, the sadness of
a walk down the street in late October.
The leaves are bright and shining, orange and gold.
But inside, I’m breathing shallow,
Inside houses, there’s cheap linoleum, dirty dishes,
Oxycontin, bloodshot conversation.
My loneliness holds, despite all of this
A lone shining fish inside me.
But when I get near him
My heart gets suddenly too hot
And complicated like a drum
Stuck inside out.
He touches me gently, he smiles with broad cracked lips
& intelligent Puckish face, he giggles
Makes inane jokes. He asks to sleep with me, wants to wake up in my arms,
The sweet escaping warmth pressed between our bodies
In the cold blue dawn on our little closed-in porch.
I open the door to try to get the heat in,
But the little cat is waiting
He wants to get into the tank where
The goldfish is swimming.
There is no reason I can find for the swift heat and pain
That embraces me when he does, suddenly,
Like being struck with a knife from inside.
It is as if I’m calling “NO!”
How would I tell him?
The happiness I arrange,
All comes Unarranged,
Because of this frightful pain, this thing, you,
The Destroyer.
You are like the cat
Trying to get a swipe
at the poor, bedeviled fish in me.
My cold misery,
The blue heart ventricles, the sadness of
a walk down the street in late October.
The leaves are bright and shining, orange and gold.
But inside, I’m breathing shallow,
Inside houses, there’s cheap linoleum, dirty dishes,
Oxycontin, bloodshot conversation.
My loneliness holds, despite all of this
A lone shining fish inside me.
But when I get near him
My heart gets suddenly too hot
And complicated like a drum
Stuck inside out.
He touches me gently, he smiles with broad cracked lips
& intelligent Puckish face, he giggles
Makes inane jokes. He asks to sleep with me, wants to wake up in my arms,
The sweet escaping warmth pressed between our bodies
In the cold blue dawn on our little closed-in porch.
I open the door to try to get the heat in,
But the little cat is waiting
He wants to get into the tank where
The goldfish is swimming.
There is no reason I can find for the swift heat and pain
That embraces me when he does, suddenly,
Like being struck with a knife from inside.
It is as if I’m calling “NO!”
How would I tell him?
The happiness I arrange,
All comes Unarranged,
Because of this frightful pain, this thing, you,
The Destroyer.
You are like the cat
Trying to get a swipe
at the poor, bedeviled fish in me.