deviant art by blackenn
Sleeping With Others
Because memory and its intrusive nostalgias
lie down with us,
it helps to say we love each other,
each declaration a small erasure, the past
for a while reduced to a trace,
the heart’s palimpsest to a murmur.
Still, our solitudes are so populated
that sometimes after sex
we know it’s best to be quiet -
time having instructed us in the art
of the unspoken,
of in the sufficient eloquence
of certain sighs. Regret shows up
unpredictably,
sleeping with, but never between us.
Like joy it doesn’t stay long,
quickly tiring of the language
used in its name, wanting only itself.
We’ve made this bed. We’re old enough
to know sorrow may visit
now and then, and that the world slides in
at will – ugly, dark, confident it belongs.
Nothing to do but let it
touch us, allow it to hurt, and remind.
Stephen Dunn
Posted over on Po-i-tre
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