Walking Down the Same Road

Last Night

Last Night

We were walking down the same road and we were both crying, Both relieved and disappointed at being alive. We did not hold hands. Did not touch. There was no embracing. And our eyes were closed. As failures in love, the view, let alone an embrace, would have finished us off. The unthinkable truth of our mutual suffocation was best left unsaid. Words in the fierce clothing of voice, mine or yours – would make us tear our tongues out. People do you know. All the time.

Which of us could bear the blood of our fallen worlds, the red stain reflected backwards on faces smothered by too many years. I can’t speak for you. But I couldn’t. I’d worked so hard at not shedding them and you’d treated them as theives. But clearly muscle was not enough and even if it was, my arms were love-lies-bleeding blooms and yours were broken timbers.

But there we were persisting. How we even came close to being in the same dream was a cruelty and a promise. Maybe the fault we’d lobbed between us had fouled out, flown over the fence and would be forever lost in the creosote weeds. We’d somehow slipped under the gate nobody guarded. Now inside how could we bear the agony of waking? The fact that we were there together was a borrowed clemency. Neither of us took credit for the speechless alliance of minds which had never before managed to meet.

About the nakedness: Maybe it means we’d had the courageous weakness to extend forgiveness instead of blame. Maybe we ceased fearing our bodies and killed our pride in the smokey changing room with all those messy clothes. In total nakedness you can make a killing. Which apparently we did.