Organ Music

by Elly Bookman

In a living room that couldn’t
have been ours or even anyone’s we knew

because it was decorated
entirely with stainless steel
and round furniture

and none of us would’ve wanted
to make things look like
the terrible future like that

we were kissing when we
realized we’d never kissed before.

And there was so little room
there on the couch whose edges
only curved and never broke off

that when we realized
there was nowhere to prop
our selves as we fell under the force

of knowing the real strangeness of it
because we knew also even then
we wouldn’t remember

much more than the coming – toward – you
looks in each other’s eyes, it being

so late and us being both so
drunk from a million things,
who knows what things, but

I think at least while we were kissing
and realizing we were kissing

I remembered your boy hands, your
tiny tiny little boy hands that dug
once into my plastic toy organ

that first time I knew you
and I think I felt just the same

as I had then, watching you play
loud triple chords on something

that was mine, that you were
assuming enough to caress and make sing
with your same fingers, pressing.