an unrehearsed universe

Aubade/Lovers-Lilt

When you wake feeling blue
remind yourself
of me lapping gently
at the secret parts of you
under drunken stars
and an orange moon.

We laughed the first time
I asked if I could kiss you
“down there,”
best friends suddenly navigating
the unexpected shores
of sexual attraction.
Two bumbling adolescents
secure in nothing
but our mutual admiration
and a determination to get laid.

When you wake feeling blue
remember how perfect you looked
splayed across the guest room rug
covered in nothing but diamonds
and me.

You wrinkled your nose,
squinting adorably
without your glasses,
trying to gauge my seriousness
by asking if I thought I’d be
any good at it.
You knew that any red-blooded man
and quite a few yellow ones
would feel compelled
to take up that gauntlet.

When you wake feeling blue
remember the muffled squeaks
of a bed hastily covered in towels,
not wanting blood-stained sheets
to give us away.

I nodded almost assertively
inordinately proud of my scratchy stubble
and newly deepened voice
– for a whole year now –
but stalled for time by posturing.
"What are you waiting for?" you asked,
and I screwed up the courage
to unbutton your jeans
with shaking hands

When you wake feeling blue
roaming empty rooms in a house
his money paid for
remember that I have never not
found my way back to you.

Supremely self-confident,
even then unafraid
to grab my head and shift it
to where it needed to be,
you were a wet dream in pinks and reds
moaning harder, faster, please
and finally, incoherently,
in exactly the way I had always imagined,
my name.
After I came you laughed softly
while kissing my cheek
and squeezing my ass.

When you feel blue
you have forgotten
that the moments you spend alone
I too am alone
with arms that flail strangely
without the heft of your body
to guide them.

Years later, at a gallery opening
for a mutual friend,
you told me how hard it was 
not to laugh that first time
and spoil it all.
And that despite our inexperience
we acquitted ourselves marvelously,
using the right amount
of touch and tongue and teeth.

Instead of tears for distance
give thanks for crisp hotel sheets
for the infinite possibilities
inherent in a cyan thong
for a DYI stripper pole
for a thirty dollar camera
for the worldwide web
for the freedom his indifference brings
for having someone who loves you
in all the shades of blue.

I had to confess
it was hours of lonely masturbation
to lesbian porn no less
that had taught me my technique –
when to move left
when to press harder
when to introduce fingers into the equation.
I had to laugh when you confessed
to the same.

If you remember
how can you still despair?