A Lover's Tryst

Do you really think love is rose petals and fragranced bed sheets with a hearth fire burning and a four poster bed?

Here in the squalor of my room is the truth, it's rats droppings and a musty smell in the dank cold and a warm fur rug on the creaky floor instead,

I can't offer you the riches you've known, nor pretend you can trade down so low as to my station in life,

We'd be secret lovers hitting the covers what of your inheritance, the luxuries, the travel and prospects .... did you say a wife?

That's never going to happen so let's not pretend this is lust, let's call it what it is and with all the pretensions have done,

And as the rain weeps at the leaded window panes we accept our social limitations, the idle vexations and show that to the world only by light of a sun,

Barely a flame flickers in the grate and I can see our breaths dancing as ghosts already, regrets of what we're surely about to do,

But your skin is too enticing, those deep needy eyes too hypnotising, and I'm already undressing those fine clothes and enjoying the view,

Shadows want to join us, they play on the wattle and daub walls dancing to the tune our bodies make as we hungrily conjoin,

And I can't help wishing my rags were finer, my hair cut nicer, my skin more fragrant like yours but I don't have the coin,

We kiss, each challenging for supremacy in a battle of first onslaught and then submission, much like the dance of our eager limbs,

If we were both more pious, less needy but greater accomplished liars, then maybe we could seek true absolution for our sins,

But I'm damned anyway, for what have I worth saving in this hovel of a life if not for this feeling, this connection, this lie we can't seem to end?

We cause ourselves such torment and delight, we break it off then make it right and still you've the audacity to call such as I "a friend!"

Our hands entwine in fierce devotion and we work as one in heated locomotion, sweat is still still sweat no matter the status you wield,

And we writhe on the floor wanting closer, deeper, softer, stronger more and more.…..... please in the squeeze of our bodies wring out every last drop in the pour,

Now the room is quiet but for the heavy breaths and the contented way our bodies fit, the smoke, it's all a joke... I never felt more like your whore,

I know there's a carriage that awaits you, I know I've no place to go and no options and little to offer someone as beautiful as you,

Why oh why do you keep coming back, keep hitting the sack, you have nothing but your reputation to lose and I want to say through.... it's

but I can't, and even if I do, as I run my fingers in your hair saying "I love you" I know it... we're ill fated and we both deserve better but make no move to find somebody new.