The Sock Drawer - 40. Jealousy, the fault

Jealousy, the fault

Sensible. So sensible are we,

so grown up, adult.

Correction: It is you, not me,

who knows when and what,

and how to section attention.

Whereas I have found new fault

in me, just more for me to mention

when listing my interior,

my furniture of mind.

Like you, I want to be kind.

But I am inferior.

I have known this all my life.

I've been an insufferable git.

And somehow you manage it

to add this fault to me and

make me better all the while.

I haven't been like this before.

I've pined and ached, my heart was sore,

but never like this. You file

the dust off of me. Sand

that rains down into a pile

of cast-off character. It bares

a strand of strange nerve

I didn't know I had.

Some parts of love

have always been bad,

but those lie discarded now

in that dry heap at my feet.

That pile of dead fault.

There is none in you.

I must be looking too hard.

You gleam so brightly that anything skewed

must be a reflection of any odd shard

sticking out of myself, my own shape -

And I'm nude.

In that surface, I'm naked.

In that light, I'm renewed.

Somehow your eyes know everything.

But you're smiling.

It's sincere.

It's also my cue.

We're really here.

And I smile with you.