Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,
you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that
between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us
had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies
of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again
why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me—
I'll never understand you,
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never
drink a bottle of wine together,
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean.
It's true: never across the dinner table
does he give her that look,
the stock-in-trade of husbands
everywhere, the one that says
he wants to go home to bed.
And when they get there—
when I get you in my arms
I turn my face
to the side so as not
to catch you out, you
always the last to know
about your own passion.
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