I hear the neighbors fucking,
television blaring in an attempt
to muffle the whack of
flesh against flesh,
the naughty sweet nothings
whispered and cried out.

It's foolish to make assumptions.

For all I know,
it's the most tender
act the two have,
the only thing that
they truly share,

Making love to forget
the icy December air,
the broken furnace,
cracks in the old walls
that winter seeps through.

Making love and the only words
I actually catch below the
late night program's audience laughing
is in the foreign tongue of a country
I can't even begin to pronounce.

Maybe this is the crucial detail missing.

Maybe the two have to speak
in their first language
when being so intimate,
speaking of mysterious borders,
some oblique shared past
that drove them to here,
horrors I cannot understand
and know only the faintest edges of.

It's foolish to make assumptions.

For all I know,
they're rutting like
animals pouncing prey,
predatory teeth gnashing,
nails buried into soft skin
like stakes into dampened earth.

Maybe it expels some fury,
to drive deep inside,
to be ruthlessly pierced.

I hear the neighbors fucking
and however the act plays out,
it makes me remember things.

Like how I barely sleep now
and would probably be awake even
if the space they fill was soundless.

Like how I think my rage
has little to do with the names
being moaned through thin walls.

I try to remember
when I was last touched
with such affection,
with such urgent need
or primal possession.

I try to summon the memory
of being so entirely enveloped
or in the presence of such
a beautiful flowering.

It's foolish to make assumptions.

For all I know,
both turn away
after an abrupt release,
unable to find solace in
the crooks of spent limbs.

For all I know,
the following silence
is when they love the most,
the best things expressed
in the unspoken aftermath.

Maybe this is the crucial detail missing.