You ask it of me
and I seldom find a reason to refuse you.
In those three minutes,
watching you suck smoke
through the burning roach
of your finished fag,
I remind myself that
if I do love you,
it was an accident.
When you ask for this,
you never push or angle.
In fact, you don’t know how,
and your skill-less earnest is
so loveable that it
irritates me.
Games and agendas perplex you
and I wonder what it must have been like
to have asked and received so freely
you’ve never had to learn.
In those three minutes
I make castles out of the empty tinnys,
kick fish-like into a handstand
tear rivers through burnt out cigarette butts and
sift through your kindness
for one ounce of malice
that I could use to get free of this
unrelenting closeness
that holds me to you,
for just three minutes more.