His brain said this will end badly
, and meant it
for his heart. But said it with synapse.
Not knowing the heart’s language. Not knowing
each love fuses its own grammar & syntax,
scraping the excess of failed utterance. It’s been
almost four years, but he remembers enough of M
to say no more
. Of S, he could maybe recall
the alphabet & stroke order, a word or two
like peanut. But how to construct the future,
how to amend action to express a danger of degrees—
his heart would have to learn, again, the hard way.
for S
- The title of this poem comes from the Joe Sample/Will Jennings song of the same name. My favorite version has Lalah Hathaway singing.