Put Away

You only want to touch me after dark.
Night time holds affection captive
And I’m only familiar in half light.

Nobody knows you steal kisses
When stop lights and street lamps turn on.
My convex shapes blend and bend into your eclipse.

I return though,
Your front porch has become something silent I cross
In the few seconds it takes for you to open your front door.

I accept your hesitant touch,
The hurried way you make love to me,
Momentary sparks in the darkness.
Tracing and retracing the the nations of your skin,
The desert of your back,
The sharp stone cliffs of your hands..
The fields of grass stretching off into sighing plains
when the stubble of your cheek brushes the smoothness of mine
Almost by accident.

I kindle these fragments of quick light
So when I return
And climb into bed pulling the covers up over my loneliness,
I can retrace the feeling of sunrises on my skin.
The golden way it lit lovers interlocking in sleep,
The moments I knew what it was to be endless.
I remember a time
you wouldn’t be ashamed to hold my hand in the day light.
You wouldn’t be afraid to say my name
in more than a whisper.

It’s 2am, the streets are empty,
Your house is cold.
Tonight I will leave your neighborhood un-haunted,

Tired of being a ghost.