Music Box

The ballerina hangs in suspension,
exactly where you have left her,
caught in between your boisterous affection
that is too gaudy for the tender
spokes of love,
and the next girl
who is stronger and more graceful,
whom you can admit to loving
on a fine October day
when you have become a man,
leaves falling all around you.

She asks you in the darkness
because she knows you mustn't see her face.

And the extraordinary power that truth
has of lapsing around us
seems chase her as the waves crash
around her, lungs aching
as your body molds into hers,
night after night,
the curve her back pressing perfectly into your chest.

So let her whisper to you reluctantly under the bed covers
of late December because you must remember
to let her be brave when she needs to be.

And all you can do in response to her whispers
is bite the corner of her left earlobe and squeeze her tighter.