ONE THING IS CERTAIN

ONE THING IS CERTAIN

It’s hard to end any journey

Especially after so much has 

Been left unsaid,

Unsaid like a guest who stays 

For rainy days and summer nights 

And forgets the particulars 

Of all the small yesterdays. 

So many empty spaces remain

So many holes are ripped within the 

Pieces and answers just fall away 

Like orange leaves in autumn under a

Dim night street lamp.

Of this I am certain: men 

Shared my bed for decades…

They of many different mercurial 

Faces and I was loved,

Defined in bittersweet murky ways

Within truths I concealed

In my own particular brand of 

Hidden unfolding dark celluloid.  

Every part of me was loved.

I was loved within the inside 

Of the truest part of me. 

In almost old age, I peel off my layers

And shed my lizard skin

And let who I was supposed to be 

Be me and let a facade fall away…

To deserted playgrounds, and moldy theaters, 

And haunted highways.

During long ago pasts and in deeper pasts and 

Into a present I was loved as a man by men…

Men loved me and I was their man.

I of the she, born a she who grew to wear

Velvet dresses and frilly dresses and false eyelashes

Was loved as a man by men. 

The significant details are not even important.

The specifics will be buried with the ashes and dust.

Because everything gets buried and eventually

It all fades away like the songs from long ago 

Not heard in now deserted houses.

Eventually it will hardly matter when today’s 

Grandchildren give birth to new babies. 

But one thing now in this time is certain. 

I was a man loved by men. 

That much is true.

Marjorie J. Levine 

© 2023