162. AFTER LOVE

From the Archive (October 2005)

AFTER LOVE
by Maxine Kumin

Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf;
who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.

... And that is why fucking is so incredibly wonderful.

It is 11:52 PM Wednesday night and I am having a glass of wine and I’m sitting out on my semi-wet deck listening to the evening and owls unwind.

Don’t ask me why, but a song from Yentl is stuck in my head tonight: I’m a bundle of confusion but it has a strange appeal; did it all begin with him and the way he makes me feel?

Weird.

I have had Seattle dreams for two nights running—probably because I discovered an excellent Seattle-based photographer on Flickr and really like his work. Well, and because the Pacific NW is my favorite part of the country.

I look at his photographs and smell the place, feel my feet sinking down into that Keith Haring beach san as my hair blows back in the stiff coastal wind and here I am longing to be there again.

... Okay. So now it’s 1:30 AM already and I am going to be very tired when that 7 AM alarm starts shouting.

I attempted to watch TV but Howard Dean was being so stupid on David Letterman that I turned to HGTV, but then they advertised an upcoming show about “the last drink glass you’ll ever buy” and then a show that is actually called I WANT THAT, which features a graphic of a man with his face pressed against a plate-glass store window.

Reminds me of Ann Pancake’s story about her niece looking at a catalog as her West Virginia grandmother notes that “there she sits, just learning to want.”

I’m sorry, but how could anyone see those HGTV advertisements and not understand that corporations are paying for product placement to convince them that their life won’t be complete until they need something they probably never even thought about before?

Ugh.

LISTENING TO: Jennifer Daniels’ Oatmeal (you didn’t have to tell me stories of how your mother made you oatmeal and all while the sun was pouring down across your bed. You didn’t have to make believe that you were in love with me when you were in love with this vision of this vision in your head.)

SANG IN SHOWER: Slip-Siding Away by Paul Simon