Learning Curve

                        I

Some days you are suspended

like scales between sorrow and joy

left clinging to past loves and longing

for new ones. Unsure what the day holds

you hang out in Starbucks with strangers

sipping viente vanilla bean frappucino

savoring its sweetness, wishing

the barista hadn’t added whipped cream

like you asked because you can’t afford

the calories, even though you spent

the last two hours at the gym

getting sweaty, gazing at muscle and sinew

of strange men in clingy, tight shorts, wondering

if each one could be the next reason

you pack everything you own in your truck

for the fifth time.

                          II

The gates of your heart were flung open

When you spoke to him

by the dance floor

And he smiled and it

felt good to know

in that crowded, smoky room

he saw only you

But you spent the next nine years, trying

To recapture that feeling

when all along you knew

In the end you’d be left

with random photos, an uneasy feeling

and your cat

                              III

You still remember the night you first kissed

the new guy, how he left you feeling

like you had been beneath the surface

of a very warm lake, holding your breath

for hours until your weightless body buoyed

upward, breathless, air rushing into your lungs, he

taught you patience, showed you

relationships need not be based on orgasms and sweat, that

passion is something you feel in your mind

not your prick or your toes

                           IV

Much of your pain is self-chosen

clinging to what was or could be

gives rise to suffering, leaves you

dissatisfied

With the results of what was inevitable

All along, you are suspended

Like scales between sorrow and joy, know

the secrets of your heart and know

that when you skip a rock

Across the surface of a lake

It will bounce and rise and fall

and splash before it sinks

Into the lake bed and the decaying

Matter of microorganisms, algae, and aquatic insects

The remains of life that line the sediment

of the cloudy, murky

bottom.

                                                                -Ken Harmon