The Things I Couldn't Tell You

I didn't want you to cringe
when I reached for the sixth straight time in a row at that dinner party
to push your hair back once more to
prove to others that the lighthouse in your eyes
was real. That the beacon of light that spoke to me
across the tides of my own insecurity came back
solid and sure, grounding me to a shore
called home I had never quite come to reach yet.
İ didn't mean to make you inkeeper.

It didn't come to me then, forgive me
If I had known, I could have whispered to you the way
your body felt against mine in those last few moments before the alarm woke me up
from the dream i felt against your back, holding in every bit of utensil
we had become in the night--to fight
those heavy lids once more in the hopes of being the one to slip away first.
What words are there for this?

You tell me that
no one told us how to enjoy the laughter of strangers,
yet I find myself caught in a perpetual smile--doubled over, hands clutched desperately to my stomach
as if it held the secrets to why my throat fills with stones every time I smell your perfume
on my pillow at night, as if holding on to the tightrope of my life
could help restore some internal balance I feel as I fall
further and further into your magicians spell,
hands first--reaching into the dark for the parts of me
I am reminded are missing by the way you come in to fill them.

Lets not speak of this in the future, to hear those words
might make it less true--might act as a thief in the night whose light footsteps
make heavy pain for morning waking. I'd rather
drown in the way your sweat falls like honey
after we make love--heavy breathing creating a symphony of poems
for which there is no dictionary. For which there is no land.
To which there is no microphone, just the small sweet reassurance that
when I close my eyes
and tilt back my head expectantly
to feel the autumn rain
a small part of me
will be reminded of the things I couldn't tell you
because I didn't have to.

And it will be enough.