A Small Light In a Dark Room

I spend too much time in the dark
Trying to understand
How your arms, when comforting my nightmares,
also suffocate my breath.
And it is in those moments that I can see us in fifty years,
Perched across the breakfast table like bald-headed vultures--
Your brown eyes scan the Wall Street Journal.
We are so silent, so still
That no static of poetry
or theature
or conversation of any kind
Can smother its way though
barbed-wire walls
in our stale coffee kitchen.
Knees and elbows brushing--
We fit together like the wrong end of magnets.
You lather in the morning, I loofah at night.
No whispers.
No music.
No soliciting here.

***
Or am I
a thousand miles west of there?
Passenger seat of a faded Dodge.
Mud spat across the windshield--
Prints of swirling dirt clouds
in the sky
Makes me remember
who I am.
He drives too fast.
He steers with his knees.
One hand out the window
The other on my sun-stained thigh
His green eyes, aligned with mine,
search the horizon for something
that isn't there at all.

***
Here we are in your bed
Twisted tightly in a mesh of sheets.
You open your mouth to speak--
I hear the drone of the ceiling fan.
When I speak
I let go of myself slowly.

I turn off the light.