Poem

On the Treachery of Romantic Love

You’d forgotten how it works: You check in, surrendering your passport and your bags at the front desk, and you go to your room where everything is unfamiliar except your lover standing there, naked, smiling

And you undress, stepping out of your clothes, since you’ve already stepped out of everything else

And the two of you dance to slow, sultry jazz, hips moving with hips, lips kissing shoulders, necks, and cheeks, mouths mouthing mouths as you breathe in each other’s breath

Till you collapse as one onto the bed and lose even more of yourself — all pretense, armor, and self-regard. You empty yourself into your lover, unaware that your lover is doing exactly the same thing, both of you yielding it all to Aphrodite, Eros, and all other gods of love

And afterwards, you recline, drifting off — two empty boats, unmoored, no oars, no sails, drifting wherever the current and the soft breeze takes you — forgetting all that you’d left at the front desk where, right now, Loki and Coyote exchange winks and begin playing dress up with all your things