Perhaps in the First Place

Perhaps in the first place this was love:

To tease and touch like puppy up paws
Before your curious sons and daughter.

Mother, you arched your beautiful breasts
And met his true blue eyes with laughter,

But then the talk turned dour:
My saintly aunt died as a child.

His blue blue eyes now bled.

You bore down that mortal sin, holding fast to him.
(Such things, we sensed, felt as good at night in bed.)

I then awoke, knowing my fever dream was
But small talk with single dead words.

Yet what it was from souls at rest
Perhaps was love if love there ever was.