lavender menaces, one spare bedroom
girdled by white walls, a dresser, and floorboards
a matching vestal bedspread
pillowed our uncoiling
twice your brother tried to interfere
prepped two rooms he said
insisted, short of bossing
you didn’t care
splintered stairs squeaked
beneath tiny ghost feet
skirring through the layered spite house
squeals like feasting pigs clipped the air
for angry hours
and eventually, through exhaustion, ceased
we were, at last, arrested between
ups and downs
the phantom monkeys to whom adults were rendered
dead
somewhere else
processing the evening: too much Barolo
the drunken ruckus
your troublesome ex
familiglia histrionics in its gamut of pitches
and me, the outsider, muted, hand over glass
none of it, the stuff of romance
things are often not what one imagined
in the letch of yesteryear
still, your skin stirred a riot in my fingers
my heart slipped its skirtings
and the rest of the world went mum
There was only the curve of your hip, a brushing
of lips and how the night undid us
