One Sunday

We lay limp like fruits on a dry summer day

Under the sheets our mangled bodies cresting with the pain of being together.

The heave and sigh, the pull and tug, of breathing too hard, or too little.

The love of my life whispering inaudibly in my ear.

I cannot hear him well, or at all

My body writhing with the pain of being here this moment, and being faithful

On five inches of bed we lay, unwrapped and unzipped

We’re all hair and sweat and clothes and life

There’s very little blood and passion

Sometimes there’s too much

I can’t decide which I like better

The dry, limp wilt of a brain slipped with heat

Or the crazy, heated exchange of low clouds before rain.

He rests his head on my chest, I on his open palm

We try and breathe together, inhale and exhale in copycat fashion.

It works sometimes, and at other times, we’re disgusted with closeness,

Under heavy sheets of disdain

We wait for rain, we think it’s a better future

When the clouds come, we sing in hope, in love, with tenderness

Yet the mangled body finds no passion, no peace.

We writhe, we touch, we wait for a

Dawn that comes without the promise of clouds or sun.

We lie naked, exposed to the cruel afterlife

After being together, we can’t go back

Innocence is not an option, and we ran past Deliverance,

Handing out free popsicles at the street corner.