After the Andrea Gibson Show

When the show ended I just wanted to leave; I was a ticking time bomb, a Molotov’s cocktail of feelings. 

The words of the poets had stirred me up; had given back my passion to me in a spit shine cup. 

The words of the poets being better than any locker room last quarter pep talk. 

They spoke of heart ache and love lost and the curse of hating yourself too much and how we teach ourselves like toddlers to keep getting back up and walk the fucking walk. 

They spoke of a trust. 
A faith in the sacredness of life that must 
must make it all worthwhile. 
That must make it all polishing us up
into our own images of heroes and imperfect Gods.

So no, I don’t want to stay and mingle.
Don’t want to stay and find the single femme queer 
who smiled at me earlier in the bathroom mirror 
just so I can feed my ego and make you dance the anxious dance for awhile, 
all because of a stranger’s smile...

I want to be home with you. Home in you. In our bed. I want to make my love a sacrament over your body. 

I want to make you the first star in the sky I glance upon every night and whisper my wishes to your ears only. 

I want to make you the altar I fall upon, knees bent, head bowed, chanting a prayer of kisses onto your marble white shoulder. 

So let’s leave now with this full hopeful feeling, this delicate seed of a dream where you and I get a rent-controlled apartment in the city and adopt a rescue kitty. 

We will call her Crow because in the first bed where we ever lay together, 
the crows outside the window never did let me sleep, 
no they were our teether to time and reality.

And because you love the lines that join at the corners of my eyes 
and never knew the phrase we use for these marks of time.

Also side note, I never even cared for cats before you came along and showed me 
all there is to appreciate in a difficult lion like me. 

And so, in love with Crow the black kitty is what we shall be. 

When we got back to your place, I kissed you hard in the kitchen as if to say, “Do you feel all this?” 

I wanted to make love to you slowly and steadily until our bodies were ground down to fine dust. Wanted to make my fingers a key that set free any doubts you might be having. That night I wanted to “fuck a flame into being” as Mellors wrote to Lady Chatterly. Wanted to burn away everything that stood between us like a fire ravages a forest, then have my tears water the charred land to renew it with tenderness. 

All these words, this poem in my head, was written instead with our bodies that night. 

And it was better and truer and more lasting than anything I could have ever said.