The Three German Words I Learned

Überraschung

Waking up in your hotel bed 

I can only think of those cigarettes 

left on the nightstand

we thought we'd smoke the night before.

Somehow that is salient,

that is symbolic

of perhaps the toxicity of love that has

too quickly spread through my blood stream,

or the sex that we never had.

Pfirsich

I’ve heard that being told

“I love you” in German sounds like

a punch in the face; I wouldn’t know,

you would only say it to me in English

and it was soft, and beautiful,

just like your air that I miss,

your carbon dioxide

and cigarette smoke hitting my face,

gentle only because you were simply

too afraid to get close,

too afraid of how easily

I’d bruise.

Verlegen

For Facebook

I chose a picture of our shadows,

taken at broad daylight clearly

showing the two of our bodies

next to each other, not surreptitious

yet proudly anonymous. Two dark shadows

existing against one another

because that was the only way it was okay

to be blatant, to be evident, to be tangible.

We are defined as faceless

and strangely tall, yet ironically

both unafraid and scared to death, to love.