Did I count then,
count the kisses lost to faces,
lost to names that didn’t matter,
lost in the ephemeral cotton candy world,
coming home lost
to adult demands and drifting miseries.
I prayed they would die, prayed I would die,
prayed some boy would kiss me.
What do numbers and smarts and teachers’ praise
have to do with love, when the boys
worth knowing sent the whole gang running
dark into the night, dumping detergent
on the neighbors’ lawns. Since when
did the girl count, if she had a curfew,
if she chose neither truth nor dare,
if she didn’t want to take a drink.
Faked love, blind love, love smashed
over a counter — a house, a baby, a husband
rising from the wreckage;
cocktail parties and they all turn to him,
calling me Karen or Susan or Shirley
as I drift away smiling, alone
on my carnival boat ride.
I would smile and smile and drift away,
tear out my bones to build a throne
where a man could sit, loosen my fat
to soften the seat for spook house love
and on Fridays fail the math quiz,
fooling each of them, fooling them all,
as I sprinted toward what really counted.
Sharon Thom
The Letting
What would you take from me
that I did not richly give?
My blood,
drawn to flush the skin
and brighten its luster,
finds its way into your mouth.
I have seen the look,
the drunken flutter
of your eyelid’s lash
moments before the letting.
I have wondered of your passion,
erratic and bold yet not of the soul,
engendered for me so I might know
ecstasy in your presence.
It heightens your thirst.
And as I fall, you rise;
as you drink, you long
to spill back into me your gift:
rather than dying I might live,
like you, at the waste of others.
But since I do not choose, I die
in your sight and you lose
your taste for me.
Poetry wooed and deluded me:
the romance of red locked lips;
the will bent like a siphon
as one is drawn into the other.
Only since the letting
do I know this of love:
the sheltering and golden grate
of flesh abandons its hold,
life gushes darkly
in a wealth of abundance
until at last
a single lover remains,
embracing himself.
Sharon Thom
