I’ve been here before,
This place I cannot pretend
Does not exist, seated
Next to a stranger
Intent on articulating
The heart of the matter:
Asymmetry in relationship
Is where you scale a mountain
Only to be tumbled back down
Again by a simple yet emphatic no.
I don’t have to like a man
To agree with him, not at my age.
Not when things I thought
Were going up have fallen to the ground.November 2002