Touch Me Not

Dan Kraines

I am here again: where I used to wake, where you once bathed in peach
light, towel wrapped around your waist, taking off your turquoise bracelets,

while I read poems at your desk, clothed still (the way the past
stays on me now). We were so often almost naked. I loved you

but could not say. Once I tried. I know that you remember: after our trip
to Vermont, when I had said how you should dance with that wolf.

We were too drunk. In my memory, I feel like I was the rapist
for not having protected you. Once home, you submersed yourself

in a warm bath. The faucet drips now that I have showered here,
as if it could earplug memory, blocked-in and feeding sound,

blocking out what is outside, keeping me trained on my inadequate
longing, some dim sentimental animalized self-hate.

Wash it out. Wash it out. I rolled my eyes to keep from crying
and could not say. Just last night we met for dinner. We live so close

to one another now, as if I am a sunflower, turning
toward you or an orbiting red planet, pulled-in and around you by a vast

force, even as I am unable to measure exactly who we are and
how I am queer. Together we thought of lines for my dating profile,

while out with your man, who you turned to, then looked at me,
saying that I should just stay over, where on your suede couch I wake.

 
 
 

about the writer

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Dan Kraines earned a PhD in poetics from the University of Rochester. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, The Cortland Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. He teaches creative writing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, in Manhattan.