(pt. 1)

Laying down my note in his bedroom’s threshold,
I use his soft snoring to gauge the chances of my exit
being successful;
if whether i will be in the elevator or on the sidewalk or further
before his breathing changes slightly–
semi-consciously his body will remember the absence
of another laying next to his…

I imagine his awakening to my hasty scrawling at his door
as i sip coffee at a nearby diner;
reading a magazine borrowed from his apartment,
another article documenting our culture at war:
“…gays don’t form lasting, healthy relationships…”
Their weapon, another tired idiom
(a word one small cross away from “idiot”)
which i try to digest as i contemplate
the lists i could make
of friends i have known for a third of my short life, or more,
the loved ones who are family more fiercely and deeply adored
than the casualties of the Exodus camps, their parents, or clergy.
Then again i think of his snores faltering
as the sunlight spills into shallow, cold craters
left by my muscles in the linen next to him.

Ten years now i have honed a dancer’s craft;
beginning awkward and gangly in a high school dance class,
now i see myself moving with a constant grace–
occasionally stumbling,
but never falling.
Five years now i have battled weights and machines;
once a scrawny, vulnerable child
I now see in the mirror a strong and solid man.
Yet i think back on those steamy days and nights in the South;
remember what it was like to fall
what it was like to be vulnerable
and even as i cringe to hear myself called a baby,
here on the cusp of 28 years,
I almost wish i could be that boy again.