The masculine confined

To a space, a room

Where next door the Germans are fucking

and adolescent drama trumps camraderie.

The boy sat across from you shittalks punks and alcoholics,

while you imaginarily label him straightedge,

his accent flares; he knows your country’s sins by name.

You know only his Prime Minister, and say

her name with venom enough to match his.

In twenty minutes, his accent will mellow, flare, mellow, flare again.

He will kneel before you, scared from the cages of boyhood and countryside and priests.

You will lay beside him. Profess your own fears. Womanhood and stagnancy.

Men are men are boys are knights.

His accent flares.

To be loved is to be conquered. Person or fear.

He’s scared he’ll never be a man.

You’re scared you’ll always be a woman.

(You will never love the way you want to).

The room is a radio

Frequency interrupted by the Germans fucking next door.

The French below you.

Youth is such a strange word for it.

It feels like childhood, skipping between numbers and words like lies to stay up longer.

The ghosts of sleeplessness remain into adulthood.

Men in robes, in chambers that echo with ideas inflated,

Larger than that fist-shaped-muscle

That sits twofold between you and

The boy with the accent.

He speaks of power, of freedom;

Each has the means for the other’s liberation.

Each is free from the other’s shackles.

He speaks of passion. Of conquest. His accent flares.

You speak of love. Of resistance. Your accent deepens.

Both chasing that nebulous existence which lies in the valley between both countries.

And the way the gaps in a song translated feel like a record skipping.