That’s what they say in novels:
a couple meet, they have a drink,
one thing leads to another,
you turn the page, and there’s that
word. Later, it says, exactly as it should:
any attempt to describe what just happened
will come across as mechanical
or embarrassing or both. You’d feel
silly: you might as well be looking
at a clipboard, saying first they kissed
ten or eleven times, and then
he got on his back, and she put
her left leg under his right, and so on.
It’s different in the movies, but there
you feel as though you’re looking
at something you shouldn’t,
as though you’re sitting across the room
as the lovers writhe and change
positions. And do what, really?
Something they won’t even remember,
just as you can’t recount what you
and your beloved did just the other morning.
What you do remember is how you felt later
as you lay side by side with the sheets
twisted around the two of you, stunned animals
staring at the ceiling and catching your breath,
and then one of you said how’d that happen
or what just happened, and the other
said what your mother used to say
when you were a little kid and you asked her
how wars started and why some people
are mean and others nice or, later,
when you were a teenager,
how you could tell if someone really
loved you or simply wanted to use you
and also how you could tell if you, too,
were in love or just wanted to be,
and your mother said I have no earthly idea.