Surviving You

Anthony Aguero

After nearly 7 years clean

I don’t know how I did it,
loved you all those years in the quiet landscape
of a burning vineyard, of a toppling mountain,
of a drowned seascape, and had stayed
attentive, at-ease, hands behind my back,
waiting for the soft-hook following Go,
and the on-and-on insanity of day-after-day
of the hand reaching for the other hand,
shaking it for its own pleasure, checking
for the rhythmic music of my own pulse.
And I don’t know how I lived for myself
all those years lying on the cold surface
of a man’s bed claiming Messiah, flesh
of my flesh, and the stream of golden light
escaping from him. I can’t resist you,
that velvet head lying on my chest, soft-breath,
and the unprotected extension of my hand
to your bulging hand; non-sated, hungry
and never really safe. I sit and think of you:
our joist, our spar-to-spar, our never-ending,
and our last hour where you couldn’t comfort me.