The air is thick with violence.
Outside my window, the thunder groans, the lightning screams.
You and I have fought in similar battles.
Together, we made ourselves a storm.

In the turbulence of our togetherness, we got lost
in the roar of intimacy and the flash of anger.
There were times when I needed you.
There were times when we were
entangled so
completely;
we were indistinguishable.

There were times when I wanted to love you.

But just as violently we sometimes
growled and sometimes
snapped at each other,
when we let loose the animals
we once had kept hidden.

One way or another, being with you tonight would only bring the violence indoors.

Tonight I want something more
akin to peaceful surrender,
something like tenderness.
Something more delicate than this
warfare we can't seem to avoid.
Something simple, like falling asleep in the midst
of someone else, held close in a world
that would never know such noise.

But that's not who we are.

And try as I might, I can't feel you tonight,
I can't feel anyone.
I can't make my skin believe that you're more than just
a memory of something I once touched.
Maybe it's the weather that won't let me.

Maybe it's just the fact that
I miss you but I don't want to
admit it. You once kissed
the bare skin of my thigh;
my mind recalls but my legs do not.
I've come down with a case of sensory amnesia and your lips
are lost to me. I'm alone tonight,
and all that I can remember of you and I is chaos.

And yes, I want you, but I don't want
to want you like this.
I don't like what we've become.
Maybe that means it's time to stop seeking
the sensation of you.

I've been counting my heartbeats
between the thunder and the lighting,
and it sounds to me like this storm is
subsiding.