All The Names That Do Not Fit

There’s an intruder that lurks upon my noonday coffee,
which I drink black and hopefully alone.
Except I notice quickly that you don’t want to steal from me. No,
you want to be stolen from.
A memory, a hug, or any other violation that could desperately
pass for some form of love.

You give yourself a female name,
Victoria,
which I presume was like plucking blindly from a spice cabinet,
praying the one you grabbed helps your food taste good.
I see you but I do not believe you, for Heaven forbid
you get aroused and make a tent of that plaid skirt.

I promise not to go anywhere as you piss out a pint of beer
in the bathroom marked for boys, a chore.
You stack your hairy legs and use your painted nails to talk.
”My parents know I dress like this, you know. I just don’t when I’m at home.”
I’m unbothered by the self-inflicted confession so soon.
It’s more curious, of course, how you look down when you say home.

Your father is a pastor, well, was. And a smile escapes your mouth so smugly,
the unhealed mask of a child who’s called their parent’s bluff.
Apparently a church will not hold when the Man who takes the stand
has both his hands on another breast.
If conversation were an Etch-A-Sketch, we’d hard shake that one clean
and spin our fingers toward God, Neopaganism, fear and other things.

I’ve been wondering what magic makes us slip our secrets to strangers.
Hiding our hiccups, minding our manners in front of those that press us like
flowers to preserve us so pure, only to sneak out of our beds and make love all the way
to some new body there in the quiet café.
Perhaps we need that unspoiled past to let us fall and flail anew.
An unfamiliar confidant who needn’t try to fix, a fateful run-in, like a dream,
we needn’t curse if they forget.

Perhaps it’s the reason a man in a gown got off his chest that day
how they recklessly chose Christian, that that’s his real name. Behind intimate eyes
he snickered at what a disappointment that turned out to be.
And it’s the same reason I could shake my head and respond to him in plain,
”I don’t think so.” After all, who am I to say?
I am only a set of ears who hopes that, by some grace, he finds out he’s okay.