If you did not see me at the end
of our stillness, then what?
It takes my joints some work
to do what the heart desperately craves,
but my mind is like a river, leaving
just to re-enter a few moments later,
second-guessing, wanting to find some new
revelatory thing. Most dreams, I open
the front door to find you on the porch
letting the sky gown you—silk, veil: delicate.
The riverbed is never empty, you would say, back facing me.
What is it that wrestled my window, jarred me awake?
The window must have wanted to be open.
Or, the window needed distracting from all that waiting.
The dream was never wrong.
Listen: I know objects cannot feel.
I know you must be thinking
I, too, should not wait for someone else
to open me. I have come this far.
Not as an object, as I would usually
have you to believe, only reacting
to what has manipulated me. You see,
my lust is always moving
inward and outward; little rose petal
in the wind … I want to do something about my lust.
Listen: I know I should just do it, put my tongue
to the flame—take me. Tonight, I am deeper
than I have ever been.