Sweet Tooth

Who says that poetry makes nothing happen? Mincemeat succeeded because invention, the imagination, drove the intelligence.

I saw how we could do it, live with these sealed compartments side by side, never letting the dank stench of one invade the sweetness of the other.

Months, and then years later, after all that happened, whenever I woke in the night and needed comfort, I’d summon that early winter evening when I lay in his arms and he kissed my face, and told me over and over again how silly I’d been, how sorry he was, and how he loved me.

We were the strangers who knew exactly what to do.

The wine would have been colder left in the fridge, but who cared? We drank it as we undressed each other.

We saw each other as the train slowed, and he ran alongside my carriage, mouthing something I didn’t understand.

Nothing in my life had been so sweetly exhilarating as stepping off that train into his embrace.

It was difficult to understand one’s own errors of judgement when the entity, the mind, that was attempting the understanding was befuddled.

Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.

Looking at pictures with a stranger is an unobtrusive form of mutual exploration and mild seduction