The Waiting by Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn

The Waiting by Stephen Dunn

T.

The rain. A full day, all to myself. These things, lulling me to sleep.

The Waiting

Stephen Dunn

I waited for you calmly, with infinite patience.

I waited for you hungrily, just short of desperate.

When you came I knew that desperate was unattractive.

I was calm, no one wants the kind of calm I was.

It tried your patience, it made you hungry for a man

who was hungry. I am that man, I said,

but I said it calmly. My body was an ache, a silence.

It could not affirm how long it had waited for you.

It could not claw or insist or extend its hands.

It was just a stupid body, closed up and voracious.

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