Therapy Poem by Leo Briones

I walk Divesadero
between Lombard and Broadway—
it’s steep and straight
and takes some time to navigate.
All this walking makes me think—
it has been some time now.
I don’t hope for emails
or check my cell phone anymore,
only remember a time when
overlooking the Pacific
I read to you and we wandered
through the timelessness of poets.
You said, “That’s like Neruda and
sometimes Borges or Ruben Dario, ”
but mostly, “That one is you, so very you.”
And you smiled yourself to sleep.
I always woke you (although I never wanted to) .
I had to return to my home of obligation.
And you returned to your home
of prisms and paintings
and the nothingness of suffering.
I’d dropp you off and you’d call me as I drove home,
politely excuse yourself,
“I just wanted to see if you’re driving safely.”
So we’d chat again refusing to forget
the merging timbre of our voices.
Then one day without warning
you proclaimed we would always be
forever locked in the mind’s embrace
that knows no time, no space.
Hallelujah! Glory Be!
What a cliché it is to believe
only that which doesn’t sting,
to think the swarm of bees
in their hive produce simply honey.
Still I waited. I waited by the sand,
by the sea, to ask you to swim with me.
But tides rise and tides fall
and this is all just inevitability.
So when you said
you couldn’t take it anymore,
I didn’t think of poetry.
Rather, I saw you years from now
in a cheap hotel room lifting the covers
over your naked body, telling yet another lover,
“This is the first time
I’ve ever done anything like this.
Please don’t think bad of me.”
And how I hoped,
so hoped, it would be different—
I would see you in a village
in Tanzania passing salve and mirth to the poor.
The mighty Kilimanjaro casting
the only shadow you have to overcome.
But it doesn’t matter;
I’ve done five laps up and back
and I’m tired.
At the top of the hill,
I see the sun glisten off
the San Francisco Bay,
the legendary Golden Gate
rises boldly before me.
I take a deep breath
and feel the tightness of my thighs.
I am in such good shape now—
a year ago a walk like this
would have killed me.