(1) Afterwards. (Revised).

After our tender love making - only the memory - the stark emptiness.

You light a cigarette.
The Lighter flames an arc that for a moment seems to link us,
Pull us back together.
This is an illusion,
A deep loneliness remains.

Our hands reach out to heal the broken closeness,
To kill this intimate pain,
The ice blade to the heart;
To regain, through touch, the depths our minds cannot reach.-
We seem to abandon coherent language,
The basic tool kit of community
That had kept us close
so far.
Kept us thinking we were truly friends,
and that we understood each other.

The grey smoke drifts and curls between us,
A shadow shifting in and out of focus.
Your eyes interrogate the sullen distance.

Perhaps you were looking passed me all along;
Sex can create a distance between lovers,
Especially when love is new,
Not tried - not proven - not fully understood.-
You fetch my case, my coat, my shoes;
Our first full night spent at ease together
Cut short by bitterness,

Talking - and yet - not talking -
We kiss goodnight, unnerved, just like two strangers,
Then part to consummate our private griefs.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 19th. - 20th. 2015. 
December 4th. 2015.