When I am uncontent, I twist time and time twists my views.
Time stops the way my breath stopped at his touch.
Time stops. I'm loving Charlie.
Sometimes I feel I could give up the rest of my life
for just another one last moment.
Unlike suicide at 17 when I feared discovery,
The first time he left I flirted with thoughts, but feared death.
Now, this sick bed dreams of our near death repeats:
I grasp his once suede, arthritic hand,
my head on his chest, my lips silent,
the map on my brow speaking volumes.
Time flexes and breathes passion behind my vacant eyes.
Passion was my crest in the age when sex was truth.
At 23, I bedded Alex for the first time
because I could not believe he used a dictionary to define passion.
The next week I slept with Charlie for the first time
because I could not believe we used the same lexicon.
We scratched battles of love into notebooks
staining pages with 3 a.m. coffee and cigarettes
reading at each other, silently.
I quit smoking and other addictions several years ago,
but, some mornings I long for the taste of his Omega cigars.
Omega: the last, death, the electrical symbol of resistance;
ironies not lost among other literature on my shelves.
Time bends and the past and future are blended.
At 20, I ask, "Do people really do these things?"
At 30, I smile at Charlie in night table erotica.
At 40, eyes shut, I tell my mirror that time changes priorites;
not bad, not good, different.
At 50, I swallow periods of vacancy and live with
temporary satisfactions in the presence of another.
Years from the dusty contentment of my marriage bed place,
when I am widowed, I appear warmed in memories of
grandchildren and homes without Charlie.
My grandmother cannot read.
At 86, I would not call her old, but she would.
I sit at the foot of her hospital bed.
She tells of my grandfather's last days and their first kisses.
The time between lost to her,
given as keepsafes for her six children.
Which is important, I ask myself—
the days she remembers, or
the days of her remembered by others?