With Only A Bed Beneath Us by Angel Rosen

I want to touch every woman who

hasn’t been touched in years, I want to 

touch myself in a way that cures me

of indecision. I want to be sure

simply because I touched myself,

I want to decide something

without it being miraculous,

I want little decisions to fall from me,

easing out of my body and into my life,

starting first with touching a woman.

I want her to crawl into my lap

like a housecat I’ll inevitably rehome

when there are more claw marks

than companionship and we reduce ourselves

to opposite sides of the house. 

She gets her space, it spares my linen,

I want that first, I want that last, sweet feline,

the damsel feud, the lesbian bed death

gone international as I fever alone in my room.

The circumstance evades me. I want to touch,

I want absolute certainty, I want to predict

her breakfast cravings because I know

what I’m making the night before, I am softer

just having said that I 

want to make her breakfast before she

hates me for the rest of her life.

First comes touch, then comes resentment,

then comes three planned meals a day

and putting the spark back in

with a different method of rubbing.  At first glance,

everything is going well, I have 

certainty in my grasp the same as I do the 

cabinet handles, the spare parts rattling around inside

of the junk drawer and my lower intestine,

where was I going with this… I linger in this

amnesia until I remember, at last, my emptiness.

Oh god, can I touch you, please?