I forgot everything else;
the way you looked, sprawled across
my heart. The way you felt, fingers
gently probing along my thighs, soft and brownishly tart.
The way you melted into me, and I into you.
Supple. Soft. Like the seams of someone else,
someone who I refuse to believe is now irrevocably a part
of another reality. This is not the start
of a poem that castigates who you wanted to be,
or which laughs at you for making the wrong choices all those years ago;
I am not that kind of friend, or lover, or fantasy.
I am here to be kind, as I have always been.
I am here to tell you that the one thing that did not fade
was your soft, shimmering smell. The scent of
not hell. Not heaven.
But a man, growing into a Dreamtiger too, until
things happened.
You say every man in the world is attracted to me,
and I say that’s unbelievable, and also something I can believe.
I remember the way you tasted of sweet sweat, and salt, and
a space between time’s own charts and long, rolling sheets
for us to find space in to breathe
in each other’s heady air;
I know that I have doubtlessly a very Kristang flair
when my pheromones spike, and I bury my nose in your hair
at night. Then I awake.
I smell Fuad. I know the unstoppable scent of our own gentle love, that will never, ever abate.
And I know, too, that you tried to take
this from us, once upon a time.
You tried to make yourself
into us. You tried to redefine
what it means to let your manhood roll rough and ready
off my biceps, my forearms, my wavering, rolling tummy;
in rain or shine, in weather wet or sunny,
you know me. You know that honey
is something that we should have made together;
the sweet, sticker-scrapbook love
of a friendship that should have stayed strong forever.
I smell the winds of change, still not quite done. Still not quite over.
I smell the darkness.
I smell the rain. I smell
a flower, waiting to bloom again.
I’m still waiting for you to come in, and once again pretend
that only sight and hearing really make one a man.
I always begged to differ, and this time I hope you’ll join me, with my husband’s full consent,
in delicately relishing in every last signal
that all of our bodies and lives send.