It's Ours

Every night we lie awake in your bed,

facing each other, looking,

with the urgency of cocaine addicts,

our eyes- smoldering red traffic lights

on opposite sides of the intersection

daring the others to turn green.

Before I grab your hair, soft as green

September grass, before the bed

sheets tangle like drunkards at an intersection,

before skin feels skin, before looking

at your face one last time under fluorescent lights,

my fingernails digging into you like recovering addicts,

right before I surrender my lips to their parallel addicts,

before the sun melts into the moon behind the green

and red of the sunset out the window, before the lights

dim with the horizon, the shadows on the bed

go with the dusk, the intensity of the darkness and looking

at you is too much, before our bodies find their intersection,

there is this perfect moment. The intersection

of our thoughts, the way addicts

know other addicts just by looking

into their eyes, the understanding that green

means go, that this bed

is our vehicle, our flashing breaths- its headlights.

Do you remember how my lights

took so long to change at that first intersection?

How I never touched you all those nights in your bed,

your stare burning through the back of my head into the attics

of my selfish mind? Do you remember the green

in your brown eyes when you knew I wasn't looking?

Forget those moments. There's no looking

back. Nothing matters but this moment now. It's ours, and it lights

the room from black, to white, to green,

and back to black again. It's the blinking yellow at an intersection

on a cold, dead night, and the tormented addict's

overdue suicide. It's ours, until the shadows reclaim the bed.

Like not looking both ways at an intersection,

ignoring red lights, befriending hitchhikers and drug addicts.

All the colors sink to green, there is nothing before or after this bed.