your parents visited

so i took my face off & smiled like
a watermelon. put the moon in
the fridge. turned off the wild lights
& stood like an altar server. they were
smaller than i thought they should be.
in your mouth your parents had always
been giants without any wings.
in the apartment though, they were
crooked people. a plaid shirt. stubble. 
flat old-lady shoes. they smelled like
"fresh laundry." we did not know
where to have them sit. there was the sofa
always sinking into the floor. the windowsill
where we kissed once or twice.
it was a bad time for parents to see us.
still, you had insisted they come. i had
not wanted to meet them. maybe i knew
everything was spilling. a hole in 
the bottom of a great lung. i did not
see you them. instead, i saw distances. 
saw your smallness too. the way you
hovered in them as if they were archways.
i didn't really like them. didn't want
to show them the bathroom or the ceiling
or the bedroom where we had finally
hung curtains only a week earlier. 
at night i thought they would go home
but instead they stayed. slept like horses
standing up in the dining room. it took them
three days to leave. still, i would catch them
on the sidewalk outside. maybe they were
trying to fix us. i did not want to fix us.
i wanted to kiss in the dark. i wanted
no one but us to know how we lived
which was sparsely, without enough light.