Yet, still I stand. What wouldn't I do just to have you throw me that sly look at my age now? Our eyes spoke dense novels. They reflected Lonesome Doves. You were the first one to see straight through me and oh, how priceless the ardor. No one really has me figured out, even now. In bed with my feet up on the wall like a giddy idiot just picturing your mouth and your curls. Ivory throat and ivory eyes. Your tongue tasting of tannins and peppermint, and your wetness of honeyed mollusk. Tidy bush and hairy pits. I worshiped at the altar of your words and your flesh.

 

I wanted you so desperately that I was disquiet. I didn't wear socks that whole summer traversing the boroughs with you. You always made me wash my feet before getting into your bed and it was so humiliatingly holy. My city-in-the-summer feet, grungy toes and black heels. I hung dong to make you laugh and ease up. Our first intimate moments: banging on the roof of your building. And we had an audience, peering eyes through their windows from darkened apartments. Some guy yelled "Shit yeah!" Of course I didn't care. Let them all watch my dominating ascension of Broad Peak. To my surprised elation, you gave in to the moment. Finally slipping my fingers inside you after years of torturous fantasies, I had pitched a tent at nirvana. I loved you so much during that first drunk and chummy 2-story coupling. I flung the condom to the next roof and you scolded me. I showed you how to put rubbers on my foreskin. You wouldn’t give freely your fluids, and were cautious with your sentiments the whole time we shared a bed. Sharing the dance floor with you was divine.

 

You loved Next Generation like a virtuous woman oughta. So precious is your commodity, your physicality. All I wanted was to listen to you talk and to watch you perspiring out there under the lights. I wanted to know you. Your guts. Your underneaths. Your everything. What made you shit and sob and berserk and embarrassed? You're a genius. I love your juicy thighs, they're more succulent now with some age, as is your astonishing ass.

 

Is your stoicism hiding bitterness, though? Does your bitterness imply not taking me seriously? I don’t care if you don’t want to touch me anymore, just please keep looking at me. Some nights I still dream of you. Your maple and moss shaded liddy eyes calling to me in the crimson darkness. It was always there in our shared stares at each other just hanging out with our clique. It was so loud. It was so knowing. It wasn't so secretive, actually. She knew I was in love with you the entire time I was with her. You felt so familiar to me, and that was hard to hide. Your sweat rank simply deeper, your head smell simply more delightful.

 

Now I like the tattoo I teased you about back then. And always breathtaking, your french raw umber locks. I want to know what makes you change your hair. I'm infatuated with it. Is it a boy? Who is he? Is it a sign from above? Is it one of your performances? You were rolling and curling and flowing, not stomping. Are you watching your weight? Do you need to watch your weight? It doesn’t really seem like it. You could beat me up and I could eat you up, deal? Your gravity creates moonlets. You never moved a muscle absent grace.

 

My mom mispronounced your name every time and she perished ten thousand and one different ways in my head for the heinous crime. I lost so many photographs of us. It was never the right timing. When you finally said "Can you stay over tonight? Please?" Your overly pillowed nest. A taffeta explosion. Your mood lighting. Your rabbit warren. You’re kicking me out because the sun is coming up. There are a million miles between feeling good and knowing what to say, aren't there?

 

I wanted to be seen with you. Did you want to be seen with me too? Can we still teach each other things? I think so. We always butted heads, and that was the amusing contest. But you always remembered my Taurus birthday for years afterward, and we'd talk a little on the phone. You invited me up to the city. But how would it even be if i did come up? Would you have me as you did before? They write about your art in the paper, and tell tale of how you move your body. And we all witnessed you flush and glowing before us. We were so young but you were so bent.

 

I didn’t follow you after right school like I promised. But Christ did we catch up after that. I think I chose wrong back then. I wasn’t thinking. So many phonies got in our way. Maybe they weren’t phonies. My old and beloved friend and muse. I thought somehow we would circle back after all the years and share a bed again, even if but for one night. I love you. Forever. Was I but a shadow of another love? Were we both really masks on nothing? Are you seeing someone now?