s

We were friends I’d thought

had become such through work

without effort or demand and only 

time to fuel it

I’d hoped for the benefits

they talk about in the friendships of today

banter giving rise to the other

to sex acts performed casually

friends with benefits

though I ever fell foul of the

bureaucracy of benefit applications

and garnered nothing of the sort

from your abjectly plain face

and thin lips

we were friends though

and in the absence of benefits

or the conventional markers of attraction

the wish for straightforward coupling

one nighters in the daytime

occasional laughs

was soon replaced

and awkwardly

by what felt like love

as it would be whenever

I opened myself to the possibility

of feeling really anything at all

we were friends

though you know how I felt

the conflict of many loves

confessed in emails

we were friends

the compulsion was

became

to have you want to have me

or to know I could

and I recall the day after I had told you

that you were in the small list of only

three in the office who

I could desire in at least

an intellectual sense –

I could scarcely differentiate between

feeling something or

feeling as though I feel something –

you wore a near see-through dress

deliberately I thought I hoped

and through it I saw

the shape of your black underwear

the pant shape

the shape of the bra on your tits

so clearly it felt like observing

total nudity

a gesture I couldn’t help but

interpret as seductive

but we were friends then

had been

friends I’d thought

though now you’ve left me

without a word or explanation

and all of the honesty

the way I opened up

the trust

we were friends I’d thought

so I did open up and

trust too

all of it felt shameful

of a sudden

myself let myself down

but we had been

friends I mean

we had been

not now.