If I had three lives, I’d love you in two.
The third? I’d smile and only fuck you recreationally,
leaving your body wasted, breathless even, on your irresistiblebed
as I grab my boyshorts off the hardwood floor.
When leaving the house, I’d close your door quietly,
my trembling eyelashes not looking back
while my heart could not not wish,
so painfully much,
why I won’t simply stay and mumble into your forehead
the words I really want to say:
Please hold me the way I hold you—not like an escape but like a treasure.
Poem by Silke Feltz
Image by Adam Strong
Silke Feltz teaches writing at the University of Oklahoma. She’s a feminist rhetorician whose research focuses on the rhetoric of veganism. Silke also volunteers for Poetic Justice, a nonprofit that offers restorative writing workshops to incarcerated women. With her poems, Silke tries to give feelings that cannot easily be described in a dictionary a name.
Backwards Trajectory 