We Pretend We Aren’t Ourselves Every Time We Have Sex

By

After dinner, we disappear
and I make you into something you’re not.
Give you soft eyes and a kind heart.
You press your mouth into my neck like
you need me more than oxygen itself,
and I want to believe it. That you’d choose
having this over breathing.
Every time, in every life.
I wish I’d worn sexier underwear.
Wish you’d take off your face and just be
naked with me. Our bodies slick with tears,
trembling, unseparated by fabric.

I wish we weren’t who we are.
That I wasn’t sad.
And you weren’t lost.

You can’t look me in the eye so
I don’t call you by your name.
We slip and we stumble
like tangled giants into my
old twin-sized bed.
We fuck like forgetting
and you are beautiful, beautiful.
Gut-wrenching beautiful
underneath it all.
Deeper than the hurt.
Beneath your skin.
Inside the inside
of everything
that glows.