Poetry corner

I've always liked this poem, and I think it expresses how I feel right now. Sometimes you just need somebody to help you figure out what you want, and there's no shame in that, as long as you really are figuring out what you want. But I also understand that, paradoxically, it's the people who really do care about you who will hesitate about doing that, while people who really don't care think nothing about forging boldly ahead. In other words, life is complicated!

She Was Waiting to Be Told
Deborah Garrison

For you she learned to wear a short black slip
and red lipstick,
how to order a glass of red wine
and finish it. She learned to reach out
as if to touch your arm and then not
touch it, changing the subject.
Didn't you think, she'd begin, or
Weren't you sorry ...

To call your best friends
by their schoolboy names
and give them kisses good-bye,
to look away when they say
Your wife! So your confidence grows.
She doesn't ask what you want
because she knows.

Isn't that what you think?

When actually she was only waiting
to be told Take off your dress --
to be stunned, and then do this,
never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one
motion up, over, and gone,
the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,
her face flashing away from you in the fabric
so that you couldn't say if she was
appearing or disappearing.