NOCTURNE IN WHICH WE FAIL YET AGAIN TO HAVE SEX IN YOUR PARENTS’ HOT TUB
Your breasts at the surface of the roiling water. The smell of chlorine
and desire. We divide and assign the space between us.
Your specialty is keeping score, mine is pretending not to.
We are not supposed to stay in water this hot
more than 15 minutes. Plenty of time to pretend
we could not drown here or anywhere
in the middle of our own lives. Three walls away
our children dream of life without us,
your parents sleep with their television on. One of us
slides closer. One of us places a finger in the other’s mouth,
one of us stands, dripping, to reach for a towel.
The tub’s motor falls quiet. The air suddenly cold
against overheated skin. Absence swells to fill absence,
water closes in over the holes our bodies once filled.
_______________________________
Amorak Huey is author of the chapbook The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and the forthcoming poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015). A former newspaper editor and reporter, he teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2012, Gargoyle, The Southern Review, Baltimore Review, Stirring, and many other print and online journals. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.
