Well, it’s happened
there is a baby
I just found out 
and he is precious

there is a baby now
and the father is handsome
he has a Sherpa-like
quality that gives me calm

I am comforted:
he is not a fucking gym rat 
he has the look of a philosopher
he looks like John Lennon.
she
was always 
too special
for the gym 
rats she liked 
to fuck in the
ocean.

I was, when I knew her,
some kind of hybrid 
gym rat philosopher 

I was as ever I am
some in-between version 
of a man and therefore 
utterly confusing and 
seemingly false 
to those women 
who have a keen nose for
deception and are afraid 
of being deceived.

We kissed once

we kissed once outside my 
apartment there in that place
where I feel so entitled to belong
and where I do not live and 
where she lives now with her
sherpa and her child.

We kissed long and hard 
and though I do not even 
deserve to remember it,
I remember it because it 
was a kiss so full of sex
and mutual appreciation
and my god her scent!

It’s something else:
I cannot sleep, I can never sleep
and when I wake and the dim
grey sunshine passes over my eyes
I am hoping for some kind of miracle
something that will bind me more deeply to this Earth 
that I might stop oscillating between wanting to stay 
and wanting to go. 

A sherpa of my own. 

I have known so many lovers and—
the fact of her child is irrevocable,
even if everything was different 
and she hadn’t thought I was 
too queer for a ride in the hay
even if we had fucked
and it was spectacular
and we had seen each other
in some precious secret way

and
broken it
off

and I had spent all these years pining

(None of which happened)

If it had happened—
Well—
Then—
This, …

and the thought of that makes the morning
a little bit worse, if only for today.