In the Coffee Shop after Paradise

In a post-eden garden
All walled with stucco
You and I sat --
Stone was less real than
The asphalt under our feet.
There was no kiss--
no fruit ripe on the vine
with pulpy white flesh
sticky-sweet like mango
or fragrant like pomegranate.
The serpent not even a worm
in this dearth of tempation.
And all our original sins
seemed petty and venial
Underneath the bleakness and blackness
of the star-bereft sky.
No breath escaped my lips
and there were no sighs
in this post-eden time.

This was written during the summer of 2000 while I was sitting in the garden courtyard of a coffee shop in West Hollywood across from a very handsome young man I'd once desired, but who had been sleeping casually with my then best friend I'd learned. I realized that night that I had no real attraction towards him anymore, and doubted that he ever had for me.