There is a deception in amorous time…Yet the initial scene during which I was ravished…it is after the fact.
(A Lover’s Discourse, Barthes).
The car lunges laboriously;
there is a clock in my chest,
whose hours are very heavy;
on this hilly road,
with you beside me, seeing through
my subterfuge of circumvention.
I look up from my book,
Foreclosing an ecstasy—
you overhear,
for I am pretending it is
for another—while you let me pretend,
knowing it’s for you.
My fingers clamber
up and down the spine,
scratching the title,
as though it were the name
embossed on the gulf
of your breasts;
I feel the textile of the writer’s name,
thick under my nails, you look askance
dismantling my valour, in this duel,
sentencing me—Language is a skin:
I rub my language
against the other.
We are bound for the hills, the road
and my strength go winding down
the reluctant slopes…
Before reaching the hill station,
you aver, “It isn’t what you think
we aren’t going to have sex.”
I say, “you speak the voice
of my heart, in a different language.”
“What does your language say,” you ask.
“It says, I’m afraid we might
have to make love in the end.”
Your eyes dazzle with disdain and more…
The zephyr throws in a flutter
of pages, they unclothe on the cushion;
a writer peeps into our amorous game of silence.
Mine is a quiet foresight,
while yours the thwarting of
a foregone conclusion.
