Because I swear this isn't a love poem

Kathleen when I kissed you on the bridge in Mystic on a Friday night
you were wearing a red jacket and it was the same color
as your hair and all I wanted to do in that moment was
marry you. Or hold you. Or fuck you. Maybe
all of those things. .

You wore red
and I wore black and we both matched our hair,
and the girl who served you hot chocolate said we were
cute together, or she ignored us, or we all burst into song,
I don’t know.

Kathleen, I have to wonder if you had your eyes on anything except the joints
and angles of my chest.

We showered together and you didn’t know what to do with your hands.
Lying in your bed I asked you questions, all of which came down
to fear. You listed my flaws but forgot to say that I’m bad at dancing.

I rode away in a train. I went home, Kat.
With one foot between the second and third yellow-painted metal steps
up into the coach car, my breath held my throat and needles
filled the chest that your fingers traced, relentlessly,
and for more than a moment I stood with one brown shoe
on metal, one foot lifted, the cold steel filling my hands,
contrite, with hope that went on forever, but you were not a part of the hope,
the hope was only for my home, that I would pull it to me with
cold steel and in that rushing brightness
finally realize why I wanted so badly to make you mine
and be rid of you at the same time.
Do you see how that could go on forever?

There are two men in me,
two men the way you are two women,
the way the dawn is a beginning and a darkness,
and both of me loved both of you like a toss of a quarter,
spinning.