Uninterested

by Rebecca Blake Title

Maybe I just lose interest quicker in people
I'm not emotionally involved with.
Maybe it's the heat.
Maybe I just need to sleep.
She was talking about sex.
About the summer and her waning desires.
Specifically, she was referring to the
Mostly attractive female
Whose room she had left
Without even a thought to that bed.
She wanted her own bed.
And her own self
Alone in it
To sleep.
It was that she had gotten so little sleep,
And that she found the sticky heat so unbearable
That she gave herself leave to think
That maybe she was just tired and hot
And not, in fact, uninterested in the woman
Whose room she had left.
She had enjoyed having her arm
Draped around the woman's shoulders.
Both of them snugly
In the semi-grungy bohemian movie house:
With couches instead of seats.
That had all gone well.
She had yawned even then.
She must just be tired.
And the heat
Was unbearably sticky.
Now, you, the reader, must surely have decided
That, in fact, there is a deep emotional
Reason why she did not stay in that woman's room.
You are thinking about the two first lines:
"Maybe I just lose interest quicker in people
I'm not emotionally involved with."
And you are thinking about something
You learned about poetry in high school:
That poets often write in third person
When they are, in truth, referring to themselves.
Perhaps the "I" in that line caught you as well.
Well, you would be right to think
That this poet wrote in the third person
About herself.
But she does not think there is a deep emotional reason
Behind her being uninterested in sex.
She thinks it's the sticky heat, or that she's very tired.