i want to fall asleep with you
in an empty swimming pool,

me in your socks
and you in my
shirt, buttons stitched on wrong.

but it's never going to happen,

because your mother
is brown hair
held in place
with forty cans of hairspray

and a bible
in her breast pocket
on a shirt composed of cats.

so we'll have to stick
to sitting in your kitchen
eating sugar snap peas
and mashed potatoes for dinner,

staring into each other's eyes
while your mother drinks
only red wine
from the left side of the table.

if she was gone this moment would feel like love.

but it doesn't.

so i construct
a hollow pool
in my dinner
of irish vegetables

where we can finally
fall asleep together
in the wrong clothes
at the peach-fuzz horizon of dawn.