Certitude

I was certain of many things.

When they told us an invisible man

was watching and keeping score,

I believed them.

I conjured the man's likeness 

from portraits in the church foyer

and mother's dining room:

        tender, mesmerizing eyes,

        alabaster skin, 

        scarlet sash over 

        a seamless woolen tunic,

        an immaculately trimmed beard─

        leading man looks in 1979.

The relationship was fraught

from the get-go.

When they declared Halloween

Satan's Holiday,

I put away the Spider-Man costume

and joined my siblings in the basement

to hear our old man read scripture

by candlelight.

I tossed my Beatles

and Led Zeppelin cassettes

into the fire

to cleanse myself

of their demonic influence.

And I tried Christian Rock.

I really tried,

but its flagrant mediocrity 

only aroused my enthusiasm

for secular music.

I endeavored not to permit

lust into my heart.

The man forbade it.

Lust crept in anyway, day after day,

until temptation metastasized 

into a crippling fear of girls.

We thought it best 

to avoid girls altogether.

But there is no safe harbor

from an adolescent boy's raging libido.

After my first nocturnal emission,

I wept,

certain I had offended

the creator of the universe.

I begged the man's pardon

as a flood of indiscretions washed over me.

I thrashed in the undertow

until the whole arrangement,

the surveillance,

the score-keeping,

the heavenly disappointment,

collapsed under the weight

of its sanctimony─

like a tent revival

in a hurricane.

The guilt drained off, thick and useless,

leaving only the sour film

of self-inflicted martyrdom.

Yeah, I was certain of many things.

So were you.

When I became a man

I put away childish notions.

In Between

Now, the pillows are crumpled, 

sheets crushed at the foot of the bed, 

clothes scattered across the room; 

the mattress rests 

over the side of the frame, 

and we lie entwined in glorious silence
as she dreams 

of something else to do.

 
Her checkered flannel and denim

will soon be on again, 

and she'll be off somewhere:

        the salon, 

        the supermarket, 

        a girlfriend's sofa.

"Do you want to come?"

 

I will decline 

without the sting of guilt
so present in the early days 

of our courtship
when she wore the shame 

of her father's absence
and I carried the burden 

of her self-reproach. 

Then I was arrogant enough 

to believe 

my love could heal her wounds, 

that form can be shaped 

from raw desire─

like willing a volcano not to erupt. 

Even when she bloodied my face, 

daring me to leave, 

the tremor in her eyes 

could not pierce my resolve.

Wait for the eyes to soften, 

I told myself,

and sure as the earth's crust heats 

and cools again,

they would.  

Hours, days later, 

after many eruptions 

and tearful apologies, 

the good times would return

and we would collide again 

on that old mattress.

We poured ourselves down 

through the synthetic fibers 

and failing box springs,

then abandoned them 

with all we hoped to unmake

for another foolhardy revolt 

against the mighty forces 

that divide man and woman.

Now, we operate 

in this in-between state.

Borrowed afternoons.

Borrowed bodies

shared like a cigarette.

While we wait 

for what's next

there is time 

for other pursuits.

There's time for silence.

For this.

**First published in Beyond Words Literary Magazine

**Illustration by Morgane Xenos