His Language

 “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1

 

I look up at him with open eyes

Trying to open them, perhaps, a little wider

than the capacity my eyelids can naturally spread

in hopes that by somehow

Opening wider I can accept every ounce of what the world might consider

A version of his love.

 

I want it all. I grasp him.

I dig my nails deep into his back;

I draw him nearer letting him into the deepest part of me.

I relax for him

so that I can again receive all he unconsciously is willing to give me.

 

I’m quiet now, eyes clinched-shut

In hopes that I might not disturb him as he gets lost in another world and might

Accidently forget and love me before he realizes that

I am still here

That I am still heaving, that tears are still silently rolling down my cheeks

For the love that him, or him, or him could give me.

 

I let him take off my bra even though that's the part I hate most.

And the part he struggles with most, in hopes that

The contours of my pre-menstrual plump breasts and the deep arch of my back would some how trick him into loving me—

The way he can love me.

 

WE are lost in transaction.

I am lost in translation. HE is lost in translation.

We speak different languages

So I must speak his—with my body.

 

I hope that if he can somehow see that I am precious

That within his calloused hands holds a precious child of God then

 “Oh,” I will speak his language—with my body, I shake

from the intersection where unceasing throbbing and pleasure meet.

My pleasure is “lying” on this stage called bed that we both pretend in.

I tell him just pretend—please

“Can you just pretend?”

 

Though we cannot act with words, because sometimes they fail,

we act with hands, with sweat, with his moans, with my silence

with the sounds our bodies begin to imitate of

the lovers that pretend on computer screens.

 

His kisses linger. The tips of our tongues blushing at one another because

No greater love can be exchanged.

His breath in my ear whispers,

“Shh, can you hear it?”           the thin presence of love

don’t break it, woman.

 

For a few indefinite moments we work as One;

Symbiotic machines, oil spilling with fluid motion,

Mental wheels stop churning, only the physical forces

we input: in, out, in, out

Because we know how it works.

 

And We are One until he must leave,

Because they all must leave

Pulling out because his love—it—was never for me.

Instead it drips away through fingers

As he holds it for himself because he cannot truly pretend enough

To leave me with his love.

 

Tears silently rolllll, “Shh, can you feel it?”

My eyes search upon his body to see if he felt

For one second what I felt. But,

Birds chirp as my soul flies away in the wind

Because it can no longer exist comfortably within the confines

Of my heaving lungs.

 

My eyes struggle to make out, as we make out, if his eyes

Are open, if his mind is open to love me…

Not in the ‘tie him down way,’ but in the ‘never leave, never judge these tears,

please heal my open wounds, please tell me you know the answer way.’

 

He moves closer, acting, on this stage as if

we’ve fooled each other in this game of pretend.

Oh how I wish it wasn’t pretend, but

I know his capabilities more than he knows them

Or rather is willing to articulate in front of me.

 

Arms hold me tight as his lips draw nearer to seal the early morning.

And my walls move back up guarding—

My heart clenches harder as his lips

Draw nearer and the dawn shines clearer.

My hope struggles along but

I will speak his language.

 

 

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