I look at your poems. I don’t read them.
I know you too well to have a conversation
With you. It’s probably deeply insulting
That I don’t need to unravel you. I always found
You extremely attractive. The surfaces were always enough.
Not that I wouldn’t talk to you for a long time;
It was always you who cut short conversations,
Either embarrassed by what you are, or who you had been,
Or knowing, by my looks, that even as I listened,
I only wanted to kiss you, and wanted you to like me,
Pre-speech. That must have freaked you out after a while,
And I bet you found it belittling: I, more bookish and nerdier
Than you, but only wanting to undress you—
Not a very good nerd.
“You want a shallow homosexual,” I said.
You said, “that’s absurd!”
You try to block me out
With longer, and more complicated, poems.
You always had too much iron in your blood—
You compared your writing to healthy bleeding.
But you’re too complex, now. You are dying.
I run my eyes down your page, looking, not reading.