Watching Her Watching Films

Three poems about small, intimate moments near the beginning of a relationship.

1.
I watched the film on her face;
settled into that landscape

of shadows flitting, as images
scudded across the screen.

I could spend a lifetime
beneath that sky;

grow old like a fisherman
whose eyes are burnished

from watching weather;
his face tattooed from living it.

2.
I am watching the film in your face:
your enjoyment crinkling
the corners of your eyes,
teeth catching your lower lip,
blood draining from the pressure,
draining back as soon.

Furrows on your forehead,
I am smiling at your absorption,
want to stub them out with my thumb
but you catch me looking
so I turn back to the screen
till your face is mine again.

The words on my lips
remain unsaid. A time may come
when, not having words,
I will wish I had spoken; a time
when love being tested, I could say
I used to watch films in your face.

3.
He thinks I didn’t notice:
he never once looked at the screen.

But wrapped up snug in his feather down gaze
I was electricity;

played the film on my face
so he could read inside me;

and if he liked what he read,
he would be mine.