What I thought you would do
I have done, only without
doing, else unintentionally.
I thought you would love another.
Oh, I have not touched him,
love, nor even enlanguaged
this longing aloud, but his is
the image with which I brim.
I never have, and never will:
my tongue is not made for it. Love,
it is all soft, immaterial
as a single petal.
This spring I should celebrate—
warm sun-burnished hair, cherries
in full-blown flower, tenderness
of new leaves— undoes me.
In spite of all signs I did not see
its coming, never more than
wondered what comes after.
Just last year I was its arriviste.
This year, nearly overripe.
I thought I would always fill
from the well of you. Well,
what now, knowing how
we are not vessels, but vines?
Tell me, who am I to claim to love?
Each morning the dappled light
sweeps, caressive, across my bed.
I tried, but do not want him any less.
I have done, only without
doing, else unintentionally.
I thought you would love another.
Oh, I have not touched him,
love, nor even enlanguaged
this longing aloud, but his is
the image with which I brim.
I never have, and never will:
my tongue is not made for it. Love,
it is all soft, immaterial
as a single petal.
This spring I should celebrate—
warm sun-burnished hair, cherries
in full-blown flower, tenderness
of new leaves— undoes me.
In spite of all signs I did not see
its coming, never more than
wondered what comes after.
Just last year I was its arriviste.
This year, nearly overripe.
I thought I would always fill
from the well of you. Well,
what now, knowing how
we are not vessels, but vines?
Tell me, who am I to claim to love?
Each morning the dappled light
sweeps, caressive, across my bed.
I tried, but do not want him any less.
Michaela Mayer is a kindergarten teacher who moonlights as a poet from time to time. She has been previously published in Windows Facing Windows Review, Snapdragon Journal, Mineral Lit Mag, Minute Magazine, Perhappened Mag, Tilde, and Burning House Press.