When we met we fell for each other like leaves.
Behind black curtains your bedroom was always dark
except for unexpected soft-yellow walls. Your dogs
would lie behind the closed door, waiting quietly
to be let in between us. Later, we became
four sloppy beings intertwined: fur, legs, breasts, sheets
skin, slobber, scents—all sleepy and sweet together, snoozing
until the bedroom’s next dark noon. We slipped pink steaks
between our wine-stained cuspids one night, chewing
and chatting by autumn city fire pit, enjoying the slow
getting-to-know-yous necessary to make something more
than just sex. Why would you want to fight in Iraq? I asked
between bloody bites, knowing the wrong answer might set
me off, make me primal, an animal wanting nothing more
than a few more nights: tipsy urge-easing evenings. Nothing more.
Your answers always surprised me. You taught me
more than I’d bargained for, the old me ready to run with one
wrong answer about war. You made me listen, and your body
suspended my judgment long enough to fall quickly. I worried
every night that I’d become a dry winter earth, cracked and cold
from holding in all the protest, just to experience, just once
what it was like to fall in love. That night, we took the fire
to the bedroom again. I expected the slow honey we’d made
to cool off, change shape. But I ate the thick sugar and finally
let go. I dreamt of you behind steel Navy-Walls at sea, not
active but present, taking down American-made enemies, awoke
in the dark and touched your skin, understood your choices
like most things that live in the raw honey between extremes. We
were two women finding beauty in clichés, in differences,
in overlaps, the sweet burn of sun on our skin as we fell to the ground.
