by Daniel Brennan

I tell myself he has a big heart because
he has a Keith Haring tattoo and, naturally,
that makes the well of his compassion deep
and plentiful, because only a man who
knows loss, and perhaps love, and how those two specters
duke it out–bloody-knuckled–in the ring,
would get a Haring tattoo so prominently
placed on his thigh and, no, it isn’t fair
that I place so much expectation
on a man who doesn’t love me back, but when
has desire ever been fair, when has the world,
all teeth like barbed wire, its bristled coat, that
junkyard dog, ever been fair to me, as if the list
of all good things which I know to be ending
doesn’t grow by the day, as if my body doesn’t
swell in its routine pains each morning, the click of bone
beneath my skin severing whatever silence
my dreams have afforded me till now, as if
a man–clad in Haring tattoos or not–could even begin
to peel back the now stagnant layers of
chrysalis I’ve built over the years, as if I am not
merely the sum of all my indecisions here
in the carnelian bleed of twilight’s exit? When
have I ever been known to say enough? When have I
ever been fair?

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. He can be found on Twitter @DanielJBrennan_