You
wear your body
like
hand-me-down clothing,
tattered
and threadbare,
ill-fitting
in places,
not
entirely your possession.
There's
the promise of something
that's
you, tried and true
beyond
the baggage of your self,
and
I'd love to see what's underneath.
I
know that I am making
the
same mistakes over again,
growing
unneeded tragedy from wasted possibility,
silent
and guarded
at
the other end of the table,
Devil's
Triangle of
strangers
and lovers and friends.
Because
now I am the one
in
the secondhand reality:
the
pale face in the window
watching
your back as you walk home
through
winter's first snows,
the
strange tilt of your head as you turn
to
speak to a girl who is not me,
reaching
clumsily for warmer skin,
your
mouth turning up so slightly at the sides.
Copyright
(c) 2000 by Beth Kinderman. This is my
original work, so please respect it.
Email me about "Poem For A
November Crush"