I don’t want to talk
about last night. 

                                    his smooth hands

thick and ugly

                        how I loved them

I said

                                                I went by your old room

and I looked into the window

like I always used to.

                                I remember every night we spent there

all the clever ways that I convinced you

                                                just to touch me

with those hands

                         how I loved them

so many other people must have lived there

                in that grubby rented closet of a room

and loved there

                                                                                where did they go?

all thumbs when he dropped me,

                        but when he held me

                                                                                                 careful.

he said

                                                I don’t think there have been many people like us.

his voice

                                    heavy slow

                                                and comforting

                                                                        a rumbled sky

            his body a gray blanket sewn from clouds

I shivered in his arms

                                    he sighed

and I heard airplanes crashing

Sean Patrick Mulroy is a nationally recognized writer and performer, and an award winning professor. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, a 2017 Kurt Brown Prize Winner, and 2017-2018 Writer-in-Residence at The Kerouac Project.  http://www.thevanishingman.com