What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (14)

14

The lake shimmers and tangles.
I walk every night by couples on the rocks covered in blankets
and the sweat of young lust masking the cold, Midwest winter air.
I stop and watch.
The couple to my left doesn't notice. Or simply ignores me.
In fact I think she rather enjoys it.
Maybe she's thinking of me.
Maybe their connection is nothing
and they feel as empty I do
or as empty as I always did
lying on the bed outstretched and alone and cold and dirty and empty,
so empty, so broken and soiled.
I laid in the same bed for years
in the same sweat of the young lust exploring itself
on the rocks by the lake on the cold, Midwest winter night.

But are we really all the same?
We're all really empty and broken,
tattered and spent, swollen and bleak empty skyline,
unhesitant like the horizon forever
but never as beautiful as the same,
when tangled and coiled together in some blanket,
some hive of lust, burrowed in each others embrace;
The sun rises and smiles at our reprise, our release, our empty, awkward embrace;
The day breaks like we do as we fall into each others longing arms.

I hear someone picking up the pieces the next day,
not even looking at the indent in the bed beneath the tangled sheets,
not crying or really caring, but cleaning the house because it distracts,
it detaches the memory and pushes it back,
pushes it further inside and cries like younger children.
We all know the feeling! We all fall down!