I overhear him say there is something about nothing
that you have that appeals to him:
nothing vicious, nothing premeditated,
nothing sodden, nothing outstanding.

Although his peers regard you as something
of a blank canvas onto which innuendo
should be smeared, he finds your nothingness to be
refreshingly deep, like those dark lakes you get in the caves
that he sees on the TV. "Then you must be
diving for treasure," this with a confident nod
as they belly flop on the surface of his analogy.
"Diving for youthful treasures in caves
of mid-life mystery!" How gleefully they jeer
-       you see them too. "Full of nothing don't mean they're
deep honey." You can imagine the tiara wobbling on a nest
of imitation fruit - but they don't know - they so don't know.

I watch him, when the gaggle goes elsewhere to feed,
lost in you, and you, aware that you're being watched,
but unsure how to behave, continuing without irony,
grinning the knowing smile of the intimate, catch his eye,
while I, this invisible narrator, take this all in. It'll never last,
you know, and we all know you do, as does he -
and they're right about your insubstantiality, but what they will
never know, those powder-puff queens, drying their knickers
by the fireside glow of gossip, and what I eventually see,
but can only explain through analogy or metaphor,

is how pleasurable losing oneself can be -
like a child splashing in waves; like a diver in a cave for whom
being wrapped in silence is reward enough.

You'll go home together, again, with all that that implies,
and I'll leave The Cavern with my observations, my lies,
my desires to skinny-dip in your lake-like loveliness,
craving your nothingness over the emptiness of home.

(c) June 2005 Alan David Pritchard