Love In The Afternoon

Our love is reserved for the afternoon. When the sun rises and sets, she will have him. She gets eggs and bacon in bed. She gets fancy restaurants and the freckles on his chest. She pokes her head out of the closet to ask him if he remembered to put the trash can out. She listens to him whistle while he grills on the back porch. She gets church on Sunday mornings and drinks on Friday night. She gets kisses on the forehead, the hand, the cheek, the mouth. She holds his heart in a jar on the shelf. But when noon comes around, he sneaks to the shelf and steals his heart away. He lays it in my lap on park benches. He passes it through his lips in the back rows of matinees. I find it at the bottom of my coffee mug or at the end of a fishing line. He wraps me up and says he missed me. I get cheeseburgers in passenger seats and handshakes and "this is my...friend." I wonder when ill see him next, I tell time by the sound of his idling truck. I never ask him when he'll leave; I always hand his heart back over to him. He sneaks in, wraps her up and says he missed her, sliding his heart back into the jar on its shelf.