Comatose

He had no problem at all spinning compliments
before the mirror, drawing beauty about her
reflection like a shawl.

He ladled dreams and affections from
depths of their collective conscious and
skipped stones across her soul.

But the moment she sloughed off her robe
like a cotton skin and cocooned
her way into the hotel sheets
like some unholy moth gone to die, he knew.

He thought of his mother. This was something
that she had not told him, had not shown him
about women. Something secretive he should
have known, but would learn in time.

There is nothing like the closeness of a
stranger—especially one that is a lover,
a girlfriend—baring herself like a map
to a traveler yet to experience wanderlust.

His fingers traced across her skin,
admiring dusty freckle trails,
scenic routes leading to forgotten roadways
in her eyes and highways of veins.

He found her mouth to be a speed trap
and through an endless congestion of
thoughts, realized that he could not
make love to her.

There was an amicable coldness between
them as he shifted uncomfortably from
desire to a need that made him ache
for mere body parts: breasts and that
space between her thighs.

Piece by piece, they unraveled
until he exhausted of any
feeling other than that euphoric
near-drowning moment and
she was just undone.

He shuddered at her complacency,
trapped in the rote memorization
of the way she writhed beneath
him, of the frictional sear of
intimate contact.

When she tore herself away from him
and retreated into the folds of the top sheet,
there was something less about her.

He slept beside her in the dark,
dreaming of the truths taught
by ordinary women.