Old Wineskins

I did not think it through,

the way your simpering mouth 

would take a wrong turn

and retrace the steps of unwanting,

the way desire would not burn

holes in your pious resolve or

your stoic traditionalism, or the way

honeyed words did not tempt 

your unrelenting blossoming so that

you still bloomed in the desert 

though water was scarce and all you had

to survive was the fountain of my youth.

I did not think it through, the way 

your eyes took on a molasses hue, 

the rawness so beautifully refined that 

I could not pay the price for such spoils

the likes of which I never could afford

though I carried the weight of them 

in my ring finger these last few years

like a string to remind me that new wine 

could never be poured into old wineskins, 

otherwise such wine, so rich in honesty 

though tinted with abandon, would burst 

open the skins, spilling out the ugly hidden 

beneath, and spoiling both wine and skin alike.

I have ruined you.

I did not think it through,

the way your shoulder would turn cold

upon my needed rest, and your lips 

would go on strike when mine came near, 

the way your touch would keep its place 

behind the shadows of your distrust, 

and you'd side-glance me with a hint 

of such prominent disgust.

And in the eye of your storm, the one that I created,

I am painfully reminded 

that I did not think it through;

I did not think it through.