Like Her Poem by Charles Malcolm

Not like honey or sugar.
Not like a lie.
A true nectar.
Like sweet soap or bitter fruit
depending on the hour,
which was usually late.
Like fresh pennies and table salt
depending on the week,
which was only late once.
No need for clocks or calendars.
Time and a Nicholson smile
stretched across my face
and frozen with wet warmth.
I wrote volumes of literature
in cursive, print, or binary
depending on which I had used last.
I painted square miles of fence
in pinks, reds, or whites
depending on what had happened first.
The little man in the boat
had drowned a thousand
quivering deaths.
There were times that I wasn't allowed to.
Out of embarrassment at first.
Out of guilt at last.

I began doing it for the wrong reasons.
The wrong person.
Even down there
I thought only of myself
and eventually
her taste changed.