The stranger in the street

Was last night my friend.

After untensing

And splaying, backs-to-sheet,

We guarded nothing;

Laid bare our uncovered bodies

And uncloseted skeletons,

Chests damp and glistening

In dawn’s raw light.

I remember well

Beyond those walls

The drone of distant siren,

The city’s pulse,

The anxious bustle of man lost in an endless soul-search, playing the unwinnable game of dress-up, a bearance of intolerable weight…

Yet there we lay.

And in that one wild moment

I told you I was afraid.

“Me too.”

Even if just by a single fragile thread,

Our spilled stories connected:

A one-night strand

That snapped as your feet passed the threshold.