My bladder hurts,
but I can’t.
He hates that,
Mr. Sensitive Ears,
my always peeing—
first after porkchops,
then after sex,
more during time
only for sleeping.
“Like a kid,”
he once said.
“Or old man,”
I said, grave.
Insensitive, he remarked,
“We’ll restrict fluids.”

Vodka in him
when I spotted
him dancing with
self-protection. Wounded,
he looked, which
brought me near,
seeking tender patches.
Cracked eye corners
despite the muscles
keeping skeleton secret.
Sweat-like unhappiness
seeping through smugness.
Danced, spoke, kissed.
He’s a nurse
without a degree.
I write fiction
only at night.
In my apartment,
we on carpet,
he on me,
me on thought:
This guy’s big.
If he wanted,
he could damage.
We two men,
cuddling under comforter.
He claimed he
appreciated my words
(“So different than
the other guys,”
he described them):
No. Sex. Tonight.

“This isn’t sex,”
he murmured earlier,
after we turned
porkchops to bones,
“this is masturbation.”
“We come, though,”
I defended, distant.
“Isn’t that sex?”
“We’ll simulate then,”
he grumbled before
lying on top,
poking so close
to the hole.
“Hotdogging,” he called
it. Like I
was fast food.
“Just be careful,”
I warned, alert.
He, off mattress,
stomped across hardwood.
“There’s no trust,”
came his call.
“This is pointless.”

Is it, though?
Are they, though?
The Davids and
Jasons and Steves
and Matts and
email addresses swapped,
afterwork phone calls,
dusky cityscape walks,
blackberry for two,
orgasms at once,
and eventually enough,
that empty bed.

He’ll roll away,
face another direction
if I pee.
He does, always.
I’ve asked why,
and he says,
“You went away.”
We’ve been left,
him and me,
and we’ve left.
I did tonight.
You hear clichés,
which fit, snug,
and hide all.
Say them backwards:
working isn’t This.
you not It’s.
friends be Let’s.
They’re still dull
as any hammerhead,
even if bloodied.
He has flaunted
his. This evening
I picked mine,
swung it swift.
different definitely We’re.
“Not that much,”
he said, annoyed
to my pleasure.
He then requested,
“Name one thing.”
I thought carefully,
What would hurt?
I knew immediately,
“The family thing.”

His real dad
could have been
the gas pumper,
the lifeguard, the
derelict who haunted
the dairy aisle.
He never knew
and told me
(in the voice
of the medicated)
he gave “less
than a fuck.”
His mom never
said, just introduced
him to candidates
(and their sneers).
He did know
the feeling of
an unkempt, unlit
house at midnight.
TV was company
(and stayed so
while we dated.
He probably thought
he could depend
on it, but
not on me.
I demanded he
turn it off.
“People can’t communicate
with noise rattling
through their skulls.”
But those were
my mom’s words,
aimed at husband.)

About my parents,
he never asked.
“They’re regular people,”
I would’ve said.
“No violent divorce,
nothing too thrilling.”
His gone dad
more kinetic than
my uncommunicative one.

Dad and me,
we’d go fishing,
which I appreciated.
Not the catching
(we rarely caught),
but the togetherness.
About this feeling
he doesn’t know,
because I’d read
novels under evergreens,
poems upon rivers.
What to say
to each other?
He was Man—
Money, Business, Practicality.
I was halfling—
dependency, playfulness, fancy.
On one trip,
he said, “Be
back real soon”
(these words the
only ones he’d
spoken since sunrise).
He left me
holding both rods.
Minutes like years.
I knew if
a fish bit
I’d lose it.
I set gear
by my book,
tripped up bank
Dad had climbed.
Almost twisting ankle,
scraping my palms.
Only our car,
mud-caked road.
But beyond there,
amidst the grapevines,
I noticed movement.
Man stooping-squatting,
like a baboon
partially wearing pants.
It was Dad,
toilet paper roll
by his side.
Wide, unshielded field.
My uneasiness churned
for us both.
I stumbled back
beneath blaring sky
suddenly much smaller.
Dad ascended bank,
not tripping once.
“You gave up
on the rods,”
he called out.
(He has always
talked concrete things—
rods, tents, gadgets—
not emotional signs.
(Why the dread
in your eyes?)
I turned page,
but I couldn’t
concentrate on words
when I knew
that all characters—
especially real ones—
can dent no
matter how gold
you make them
or how much
you love them.

Even if prodded
about my parents
by this boyfriend—
he never did,
though, of course—
or by my
future husband (a
fantastical guy who
lives in a
fantastical realm where
I can marry),
I wouldn’t offer
more than usual.
Family taught me
the importance of
things in confidence,
realizations never voiced.

“Why won’t you?”
he always asked.
He said it
tonight, after I
brought up kin.
This was counterattack,
discomfort for discomfort.
OK, fuck me,
I could say,
or else, I’m
ready for you.
Or other words,
of the heart,
not the groin.
They could be—
simply, noncommittally, briefly—
I like you.
Just three words.
Just three months,
being with him.
Thousands of moments,
pregnant with affection.
I won’t say—
why should I?
So there was,
“Sometimes it hurts.
I have to
be wanting to.”
He took his
palms off me
and faced away.
(I remember others
who have chucked
my devotion because
I wouldn’t give
them my ass.)
“When will you
ever open up?”
he asked, looking
at the wall.
If I’d wanted
to do it
to him he
wouldn’t let me.
He explained once,
“I’ll bottom when
my partner bottoms.”
I turned opposite,
back to back,
symmetrical with him.
When you don’t
let emotion out
there’s no chance
guilt gets in.

Intriguing in a
reddish, blooming wart
kind of way
is how I
actually craved his
lips nipples pits
belly cock scrotum
calves heels toes
hole and whole
more than I
have anyone else’s.

I could pee
enough to soak
this entire mattress.

There’s a nightmare
I had after
we began dating:
Inside a room,
a man lay
across a bed,
fucking a hog.
The beast, sweating,
sat on lap,
bouncing, squealing, bouncing.
“But you can’t!”
I told this
man of indistinction,
“That’s a hog!”
“Yeah,” he said,
grinning, fucking, grinning,
“But this bitch
will do anything.”
I started out,
but turned upon
hearing hog-shrieking.
The man’s hands
in beast’s mouth,
parting jaws until
tearing, bleeding, splitting.
The man met
my horror like
all was obvious.
He asked me,
“How else do
we make porkchops?”

Answers were delayed,
solutions never showed,
so I escaped—
From his heat,
off his sofa,
down his stairwell,
out his complex,
into the blue-black
of night’s climax.
Usually my romances
only lasted weeks.
Some months ago,
I should have
handed him a
card like waiters
distribute their tabs.
Now we end,
it would state.
We must accept
that sex stops
and romance stops
and love stops
because hearts stop,
all of them.
If you don’t
believe in starts,
stops are easy
and in betweens
nothing but time.

“You’re too old!”
my mom scolded.
My dad yanked
up my pants,
the flow interrupted.
As a kid,
I would pee
for any audience
from atop the
brick wall that
divided ivy’s disorder
from flowery rectangles.
My stream arcing
for cocktail partakers
or sisters’ peers.
I delighted in
the spilled laughter,
the reluctant smiles,
the sudden intimacy
cracking any rigidity.
Except my parents,
who stayed stolid
throughout each encounter.
Forcing me up
to my bedroom,
into my bathroom,
they taught that
exposure is dangerous,
freedom an embarrassment.
Standing before the
clean, cold toilet,
them watching over,
I cried knowing
that there was
no liquid left.

I’m almost full,
the bladder urged
on the sidewalk
before his building.
Let go and
squeeze me dry.
I thought how
I could wait
until my apartment,
and yet the
idea of my
thin stream echoing
in solitude without
anyone to hear
instigated a panic.
I knew if
only he could
let me pee,
if I would
let him fuck,
this would work.
Peeing and fucking
are facile enough.
It’s the mind
making them epic.
I snuck inside
the building, shadowing
two lovers binding
across the courtyard.
On his door,
my coy knuckles,
then desperate fist.
He opened it.
I saw his
face in darkness
(showing dreary self
I didn’t recognize).
And closed it.
“Please,” I said
to naked wood,
“How are either
of us ever
going to establish
a relationship if
we’re always retreating?”
He opened again,
said: “I’m tired.
We’re sleeping. You
can’t wake me.”
Mr. Sensitive Ears,
Mr. Terrifying Eyes,
Mr. Hideous Mouth.
I didn’t kiss.
Instead, I assured,
“I’ll be quiet.”
In bed, I
kept my ass
sealed in underwear
and swaddled with
a quilt. He
reached for it
once and I
entangled it further.
Tomorrow, I thought,
we’ll talk about
peeing and fucking.
But tonight didn’t
close with sleep,
as I planned.
Instead, my ankle
hit his calf.
“You just shifted,”
he told me.
“I’m almost unconscious.”
I said back.
Just three words,
just one lie.

To a friend
I once said
he was abusive—
“An emotional violence,”
I called it,
because he disparaged
my constant sobriety,
my spiritual aloofness.
But I understand
well that if
a door’s stuck
you kick it.

The bladder again.
It almost weeps,
rather than talks.
In a movie
you can wait,
knowing the end
will arrive with
an anticipated surprise
or at least
a sentiment you
came here for.
But a relationship
makes you doubt
about holding on
in any way.
If there isn’t
love for lifetime
then there’s agony.
Maybe only briefly,
maybe agony that
you’ll forget when
you reflect on
the ejaculations, the
trip to Barcelona.
But agony’s agony,
and that stay
in Spain could
always just be
a cramped hotel,
brown tap water,
days of rain.

So I pee.
Not in bed—
in porcelain hole
down his hallway,
following careful footsteps,
his rolling away.
I listen to
flow, wonder if
he does, too.
After I zip,
I leave again,
this time final.
I’m not brave
enough to see
the possible close
on his face,
so I shut
doors behind me.
It’s still night,
equally dark yet
unpopulated, paralysis-still.
Morning forever suspended.
While I stride
up the hill
toward rented shelter,
I think how
I’ve walked this
street with him
and other men
before him and
probably other men
in the future.
Before, I’ve considered
my favorite feeling:
to be alone,
and nobody can
tell my location.
I think I
liked that because
I realized it
was an easy
form of freedom.
But sometimes—more
and more often
as adulthood unravels—
I suspect it’s
better if there’s
someone who knows
where you are.