Bedside Manner

Too often
we teeter on the dichotomy of
our mutual evasiveness, lingering
in circles of conversation that mean nothing
but also everything
as we lay opposite each other — our arms
casually propping up our bodies. It’s here
I find solace

in simply knowing your presence.
Be it nothing except the nervousness that
trickles in, feeling perhaps I might
see your face,
your crooked grin,
your sideways glances toward the floor.

That quivering tone your voice takes, 
I want to always know 
its sound as you meander through stories.
I want to always feel your breath,
growing heavy as you tire,
coming out in wafts as you laugh,
binding up in the back 
of your throat as you grow tender.

But I wonder
if you can sense my hesitation from 
the slack of my embrace, or 
whether you know
the color of my eyes
as so many men but you render
comments on their hazel shade.
They notice me, and

I feel what they see.
Like clouds of smoke filling 
up a small pristine room, where
everything burns.
From the print indentations 
on my fingertips to the lining
of my lungs. It grows course

until I grow teary-eyed and I leave —
bar stools overturned,
threads of drunken dialogue 
left to unravel. They mean nothing
but also everything.
Because I retreat to them, and their
false Don Juan bravados drenched in solutions
of saliva, sweat and semen. I’d almost drown
in that place.

I’d sleep in that place.
I’d breathe, I’d eat, I’d fornicate,
I’d defecate in that place.

And you’d know nothing, but
the time by which to appear at my door.
Dressing down. Undressing.
Peeling away the material 
clothing you. I disrobe, as well,
and from behind
our flagrant veils of nudity,
still, I hide.

Your hands seem eager,
roving the fullness of my shape, somehow
accepting its defects at whim,
overlooking the sum of its longing.
You fuck me, but don’t see me.
Those hallow light eyes of yours

flicker, shiftlessly gazing
at the base of my clavicle, then farther 
down into soft tissues.

In my memory, the succeeding moments
are a blur of moans,
thrusts and shaky limbs, until
I’m left an enfeeble splotch 
over the sheets.
And willingly we wander into
an exchange of words about nothing,
but also everything.

Now only the moments I hold back
later entice my recollection. For I listen on
to every story of your dating girls, 
girls with tattoos you hate, with good looks
that move you — incrementally farther from me.
Because I think: Why not me? I have no tattoos and looks
on which some men ponder, and eyes that,
well, you never notice.
You know not what I’ve given up, the fruit
of my womb, and nights without my legs entangled
with another man. All for the hope

that your bedside manner might translate
into feelings I can favor. Quick now,
for the cycle’s set — regress, revisit, repeat.