Kiss Me Again (And Let’s Forget This Ever Happened)
Gabriel Duncan

Your eyes
He said
They touch me softly
My heart was pounding
Booming inside my ears

We laid
Touching
Side-by-side
I said
I never want to let you go

Inside, I damned myself
Less seriously
But still
I spoke quietly
Evading
His boyfriend’s ears

For he,
Though snoring
To me,
A façade of peacefulness
While we were both consumed
In the flames
Abandoned long ago

While his fingers
Traced patterns
In the hair on my chest
I stared at the ceiling
Contemplating . . .

What?
I wondered,
What did I do?
. . . Lying with two.
How?
I digressed,
How could this end?
Tempting fate is bad enough
But jealousy is worse
And now I lay between the two

And now I lay between the two

Darkness offered little solace
While I reveled in the naked embrace
It seemed wrong now
How easily
It came to be
It seemed wrong
How gripping
The desire
How tempting
The robbery

No matter
How or who
What fault
Or intent
Or even if
It was meant
Even if it was wrong
One night together
Convinced my entire being

In mid-day’s light
My dream was realized
No.
I realized
I could not wake up
Even when my eyes were open
And I could smell the shampoo in his hair
My strongest waking recollection
Was the taste of his soft lips

If it were simple
O! If only pleasure were true logic
If happiness
Was neither dependent
On physical beauty
Or intellectual colloquy
Nor involved
With the inherent attachment
Forged by an almost
Alchemical transmutation
Of my body against his