Hello Again

Like the genteel on holiday, we greet each other politely- a kiss on each cheek.
We've been here before and try to chat knowingly- though I have forgotten

how hot the kitchen gets when I cook and you hum Carmen in my ear,
the way it makes me move- a seductive expression of audiophilia.

Your tattooed trio of Japanese swans is new, like the shells on the windowsill-
souvenirs from my family vacations to the Keys and the Great Barrier

Reef. You finger one gently, and if I wasn't still charmingly shy,
I'd tell you of how I picked it up on the beach the morning that frost

blurred my Aunt's Bahamian porch. Of how cocks imperiously strolled the sidewalks-
homeless beggars in regal finery, that crowed so loud when dawn slid over the horizon

and bumped up against the beach, that the minister's wife fed stray cats under her house-
put up with the feral screams of their sex at night- because she liked to sleep in.

But you don't have time for stories, and we laugh breathlessly at our own hesitant humor-
knowing that the other was just teasing, but uncertain if the joke was suppose to go as far

as the other shore. When you leave, I'll pick up the shell and hear the memory
of your breath trapped in it. If I close my eyes, I'd taste ocean salt against my lips.