--- T E R E S A   L E O

Idiot.  What I said 7 or 8 times in the bathroom after.  
After sex, after the confession that came out like clockwork, 

two months in, two mouths on one head, too soon to say it, 
but the beaujolais village, something light in August,

and no pause, no clutch, no drive train coupling, 
just me and Best of The Doobies spinning in the dark.  

Love.  He wants to smoke.  Naked, nothing, no preamble, 
it’s dark, it’s da Vinci on screen-saver, living room computer, 

the idiot moment under the skin.  Da Vinci, backlit, 
panels that bounce, all orthogonals and line drawings,

the stuff that aerodynamics and corners are made of.  
He wants to cook.  Penne or angel hair, 

white or red, asparagus or projectiles that veer off, 
take shape into objects that fly.  This doesn’t.  

He wants patience, pause, but I can’t say 
and study the screen:  a synecdoche that isn’t, 

two panels cross and are lost.  One enters and the other exits:  
da Vinci is grinder/papermill/printer, wings-on-hinge, gadgets, 

parts that come full circle and stop.  We’re paralyzed, 
sfumato, magnetized to forks and can’t look up.  

Long train running, not, the parmesan draglined 
all to one side.  He wants to know if it’ll be weird.
  
The beaujolais’s gone and now beer, Jamaican, 
something with tang, as if only the foreign 

could stand for what’s vacating, visceral, seizing, shocked.  
Not weird, but lateral, where across means 

bypass, sidestep, around-the-bend, through.
I know the pitch and scale, the someday and maybe then, 

the look of the room when it’s starting to shrink.  
We’re going there, fully, airborne and without caveat, 

all barrel springs, curvature, gradations of shadows 
landing on spheres.  I can’t make it stop.