For the Cult-Themed Party

I dressed as a stag: headpiece

of antlers, fabric flowers

hot-glued to a harness, my ass

hanging out of a jock.

Someone in a white tunic said

I looked straight out of

Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun.

Someone else said, More like DeBussy.

While some took Molly and enough

Viagra to counteract the Molly

and some busied themselves

in the woods gathering brush

for the bonfire, a man I had grown

to love took my picture

among the hedges and saplings

the laurel had sprung up against.

Wine-drunk, we napped that afternoon

in the casita, my palm resting

on his belly, rising and falling

to the slow flute of  his breathing—

whatever he exhaled,

I breathed in. We didn’t fuck

or even kiss. And through the skylight,

the light changed from chamomile

to lavender, from lavender to violet,

the muffled drunken yowls outside

persisting. We couldn’t pretend

to be asleep much longer. Even in Nijinsky’s ballet,

before its graphic depiction of desire,

a faun first wakes center stage on a set

adorned with white paper trees

and a single shaft of  light. Even in spring,

his hair still cradled

under my chin, I longed for spring.