Making Love Without Love
to a White Girl

The dishes are left unwashed. Moist
bits of tofu and mushroom are left to suck
up water from a half-filled sink -
remains of a meal that made her marvel
"It's just like a restaurant!"
The carpeted stairs swallow my footsteps.

She went up before me.
Maybe knowing what I was thinking.
"Tonight you're doing everything right," she cooed.
I don't know who was the aggressor.
She has blue eyes and
asked me to a week before.
I turned her down then but
reconsidered after we
gazed at photorealistic
renderings of Waverly Place
at the Zimmerli and
spoke in awed tones.

I reconsidered after smelling
the faint bite of her body
after a day spent walking.

I reconsidered after seeing those
blue eyes growl up at me
when I placed the weight of
my body on top of hers.

Why must it always be
above and below?
Lips collide and I don't think about
Nanking
Tianamen Square
or Manzanar.
Pre-meditated crimes delicately forgotten
like the garnish left
on a kitchen counter.

I still don't know who seduced who.
Brown hair black hair.
Eyes like night riven with faint scarlet.
Searching hands.
Wet lips, but she bites hard.
I hold her down, she struggles and smiles.
She puts it on with her mouth.
"When their kids grow up, they have no culture to go back to."
In this moment, the words of my grandmother do not ring in my ears.
I do and I don't know where this is going
and don't care what it "means".

4/25/05