It's Awkward, You know, When You Know

It’s awkward, you know,

When you know,

That what you do is superficial crap.

But you do it for something to do, the Saturday night, bar mentality emptiness.

And everything about you is wrong, your dress, your attitude, your way of being is wrong.

You didn’t bring him out of his world, but he came into yours.

Made the effort—Supreme—like Robbie

But more like Brando cool and displaced,

Like Matter,

 In the wrong composition of a cell,

Or an atom, or a cluster of something scientific, beyond your comprehension.

So you attempt moulding, shifting and changing, awareness acute and composite.

You want to be right—correct— but you know that if there was a tree, right there in the bar, you would climb it.

Twenty, thirty, forty feet, into the boughs, because that’s where you are.

A move, another bar, another, another, all wrong, sweating out the loud and the raucous.

Bar stools in opposition—knees touching—almost, intensely aware of his nearness and his so far awayness.

Talking about stuff that may be relevant to life— but probably not.

Out of the blue he drops a kiss onto your lips, a drop of rain into a lake, there and gone in a second.

Your eyes widen like Bambi and you think, God Dammit, couldn’t you give a five minute warning, or a metronome beat like Countdown.

He hates the place and your kind of fun, but he likes you.

He made the effort.

His world isn’t your world, but he’s there anyway.

He holds the door of the taxi open.

His arm open, around you for the walk from the pavement to the door.

You make coffee for one, he has beer `cause your coffee’s shit, which you know, but don’t care because coffee’s just coffee.

Heel’s off, he lifts you onto the unit—where you prepare food—and he adds milk to your shit coffee.

Bum on one counter, feet, braced for stability on the other in case you slide like a fool.

And you see the hole, too small to be relevant in your stocking.

‘Bed Time?’

You nod, negotiating the counter to floor continuum.

And you’re naked for the first time, shy but not ashamed and the sheets are cool.

And it hits you as you touch—and connect, that it doesn’t matter that you’re purple and he’s aqua marine, because sometimes—not always—but sometimes, it works.

Your thighs tremble, you wrap around him and pull him into you—no hands—he’s man enough to let it take as long as it takes to find where it wants to be.

He raises his chest—connected hip to hip, eye contact for a time.

But you pull him down; you want his weight, his solidity—connected.

And you clutch at his shoulder, his back, fingers pressing him down, onto you.

All of him, on you, in you, around you.

You’re a hawk, imprinting.

His hands on you in the same position as yours on him, mirroring.

Equal pressure, equal desire—equal.  

And five minutes after the last kiss, he’s asleep, and it’s all right that he sleeps while you don’t. He frowns in his sleep like a child,

And snores himself awake, just one blast—like an assertion.

And he smiles, ‘What you looking at?’

And he sleeps with your hair wrapped around his hand—tethered. His head on your breast, leg across you—pinned.

And the quilt has a rose, or a geranium, a daisy, or a chrysanthemum—some such shit, under his chin like a litmus buttercup.  Does he like butter? Does he like me?

And it’s awkward, you know when you know.

But knowing anyway, he accepts the differences— he did that for you.