It Takes a While
I used to remember everything
These days, my head is a sieve.
Thoughts run from me now,
afraid of sleeping in my mind.
I think you're a little afraid of me
my uncertainty, perhaps?
I hope that's all it is.
Then, at least I know that beneath doubt
I am still the same.
Last night was the same
as our old Sunday mornings-
You held my happy self
in the crook of your arm,
Plucked from my wistfulness
until I rolled over.
You caught me looking then,
and stiffened like a soldier to attention,
Easing on a wrinkled smile to assure me
you kissed my hair,
then my lips, my heart, then each collarbone.
It must have worked,
because I patted you back
and it was only afterward,
With the city asleep and my body
finally quiet but for the medication in my head,
That I realized:
You'd been kissing a cross onto me.
And I understood then-
had it really taken fifty years to reach this point?
That you were not fearful,
as I'd always excused you to be,
but resigned.
Knowing this to be far worse, I cried,
and saw you as crisply as any polaroid.
