Passion Slipping From Your Hand
Did your heart pivot with mine
The day we did nothing together;
The morning you washed, cut my hair;
More precisely, in that moment
When your scissors slipped from your grasp,
Your Delilah becoming Damocles,
Falling swordlike past my face.
Your hand rushing to intercept danger,
Inches before landing in my lap and you,
Laughing to cover some deep feeling, whispered
The thought we might have injured, cancelled
That which you shyly called, my ‘manhood'.
Taking us instantly to ambiguity
With that one word, One thought,
Its awkward hint at forbidden passion, sad regret.
Where was your spirit in those bonded days;
Had your mind, your heart, slipped
Before your hand?
Did you hold breath through that uncertain moment
Waiting, watching for some desired response,
Some thawing of emotion, melting of restraint,
Your steady gaze studying my eyes as I failed you,
Frozen in the tension between immense, illicit desire,
Uncertainty, and fear?
All I now remember––biting back the imagination of you,
Constraining an urgent impulse to trace your thoughts
To their source, to understand the moment, you, us.
In that momentous silence I whispered to my mind
Open your hand again, let everything slip, fall as it will
We’ll brave the risk; let’s play this free together!