She Is My Seventh

Another dark one. I am not aginst relationships per se, but do not expect them to do what they cannot, or should not. To expect mere physical love to be some panacea for the soul's ills is to demand too much of what is supposed to be dessert, not the main course. I love ice cream, but a diet of ice cream alone would not be wise.


She is my seventh,
I am her third.
Her breath is warm against my neck
As I loosen the buttons,
Remove the hooks,
And pull the covers over us.

Ours was a chance meeting,
But we are no strangers now,
Walking familiar pathways,
Covering explored ground.

She is ticklish,
So I try to touch lightly.

And I don’t kid myself:
What drew us was hunger;
Not love, loneliness.
Our uniting is a mutual hunger.
She feeds on me
And I feed on her.
And it feels good,
Fulfilling--as if,
For the night we spend together
We achieve more than a physical act.
We love and touch
And know each other
In the original sense,
And we can hold this feeling
For weeks, months,
A lifetime perhaps.

But who am I fooling?
After our urgency is spent,
Our small talk doesn’t hide
Our growing restlessness,
With ourselves, with each other;
Realizing that something is still missing,
Even after our best, so that
As we tell each other how good it is,
We think, “Damn you,
You’re not what I want either.”

Maybe it’s time to go.
But I don’t want to start looking again so soon.
So I lie with her and to her,
And talk about forever,
And pull the blankets tighter
Against the growing cold.