Editor's Note:  In his submission letter Jim wrote: "Absorbed" [is] an outgrowth of a poem that somehow morphed into a tongue-in-cheek 'remembrance' of a one-night stand that never occurred (honest). Its second publication was in an anthology from Ragged Sky Press titled Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems. When I read it at the launch parties, I introduced it by saying, "This is a poem made up of unequal parts of nostalgia, faulty memory, and wishful thinking." 


Absorbed


While her breathing 
head and hair welled 
on my side of the pillow, 
my pants swelled on the table.

While her mossy gown 
shook over and down to soak up 
the glossy half of both of us
in fire thickly attended, my pants

put this all in perspective, half
dripping from the table, extended
when sudden light and wind prodded
movement with her breathing, 

upended till my head and hair 
and the light and the wind were
seething from the fire flicking 
both of us into flames that subsided only

when my longstanding obligation 
to my pants was faithfully fulfilled. And 
the light and the wind divided. 
And I never saw that table again.

Originally published in The Real Eight View.