Sonnet for the Man I am Not Dating

I’m reading American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes, in the driver’s seat of a hot car while waiting for my friend who I’ve taken to the dentist because she’s got a flat tire. The words in the book are a conversation I am having with Black men, only I don’t speak. I listen. Then, I text you. We write something funny. Something sexual.  You say something about your body, a body I find beautiful. I make a promise not to consume you. We talk about healthy food and how hard it is to stick to a routine. You lament the lines you’ve lost on your body after surgery—the way your muscles used to rise and fall in their topography, so easy to map. I lament the lines I can’t find in my head to make sense of things. I tell you I will not dissect you and leave you in pieces. You do not respond. Just say no if it’s not what you want. I will stop asking. The bell on my phone is silent. Then, as if waking from a dream, the phone shakes. Sorry! No that's cool. I am prepping for a meeting now, so I am all over the place. Of course. I enjoy chill time. 

I smile, relieved. 

Sorry to interrupt your day, I say.

 

Nah, the day interrupted our conversation. 

And what of you is embedded in the pages I’ve just read? Is it the ways in which someone has tried to erase you and will try again while I love on you as if that could make you live longer? But I’m not saving you. You save yourself every day. I don’t even know if you think about it that way. I am a woman. I look over my shoulder, too. It’s reflexive. But I am white. I am not in as much danger, though I’ve felt a man’s hands on my body uninvited more than once. It’s you who throws out the line to me, fifty and single, a bit out to sea in an ocean of loss. I taste the sweetness that you are and digest the parts you allow me to. You take your insides with you and leave me a shell, but its shape has formed itself around you. As I explore its angles and interior spaces I get a whiff of you, feeling—inside.