this is what i do. as if it is right. me, acting as if right matters (when fun is the summum bonum; when the sun and the boon gives way to the stars and the moon _and all the angels with their cameras take your money shots and expose your negatives.)
as if a conversation by any other name would be just as sweet.
at least that’s what i tell you when i leave you there, waiting in the dark of your own boundaries, long enough for the fears of your life to scratch your naked body and pierce your hidden ambition. your knees hurt, your prayers remain unspoken, and there is the pain of the sweetest hangover in the places you don’t want to remember are yours.
scared to see what i see, you keep your eyes closed. scared to say what you know, you give your tongue to the air and lick the waiting. it kisses back. ripples that pluck and sear and simmer and bubble and boil _as if you’d dare to touch yourself, after doing such a great job at keeping it all hidden_ and tense and release and the push and pull of opposite actions and back and down and rounded and now straight and
i crack the door.
no. i’m not back yet.
i leave you waiting—to dine on the exquisite, to seep in the juice of your own inadequacy, to baste in the fear of what only you know, to bask in the fantasies that you share with the strange. i leave you waiting, as you have always done to me; as i have always relished in the tastes of summer in the fruit that bursts upon me after a hunger fast in protest of these unfair conditions.
unfair, i say. and you agree.
(as if a conversation by any other name is a monologue.)
i leave you waiting until you are ripe and ready to be picked. and, at the height of your readiness, i pack you away and leave you there, acting as if it’s right. as if right matters.
_i have not seen the world and brought it back for you just to play games.
