Curled against the
smooth shape of your body
one month after we break
up
It feels so comfortable
and good and I wonder why we had to
end things.
I see an ant carrying
more than its body weight and I remember that
was how I felt most of
the time when we were together.
That night I brought you
home after reading
the sex poem about you
at the Queer open mic
and I made you come so
hard you left a sweat stain in the shape of
your body on my bed,
we had to change the
sheets before we went to sleep
and in the morning you
asked me to breakfast
and over crepes you
asked me if I thought I had made a mistake
breaking up with you.
Looking over my decaf
latte, my heart lurched a little into my throat
and as I gulped it down
I said “No.”
“Do you mean because of
that poem I wrote?”
and you nodded, “Yeah.”
I said no again, and
then I told you about the ant, carrying more
than its share of the
weight,
and you sighed that
heavy sigh
and even though I could
not see your eyes behind your sunglasses
I believed that your
sigh breathed the relief that I felt.
You put your hand so
kindly, so softly on my upper arm and you said,
“I felt like that too.”
And then it was my turn
to sigh a heavy breath of release.
Then you said “That’s
why in that letter I wrote you
I said that line- ‘We
tried. Goddamn Did we try.’”
And then we both just
sat there
nodding at each other
in mutual
understanding.
Until I started to cry.
One big, movie-style
tear, just rolling down my face, slowly.
You joked, “Are those
happy tears?”
And I shook my head no,
and said, “These are
because I am feeling again
just how HEAVY that felt
and how HEAVY our relationship was.
I weighed too much. You
needed so much
and I am sorry. I’m
sorry that I needed more but I did.”
And you said, “I’m sorry
too.”
And I chuckled at how,
one month later we are still sleeping
together and we’re still
spending hours processing
that we’re still
sleeping together--
“Is this okay for you/do
you have expectations/I don’t have expectations/but I want to be
sure that I don’t start
to get them by accident/I mean by default/I mean we are lesbians after all,”
And everyone knows how
much we like to process shit
and how women can’t have
sex with no strings
and how our emotions,
tied up with the moons and the tides
can’t ever just be
simple. And I’m okay with that.
Because we’re on the
same page.
Maybe two sides of the
same coin.
And I still fucking love
you
and
you can’t just turn that shit off.
