Andrew McMillan

urination

I’m scared of bumping someone while they piss
those Mondays I’m a packhorse bags hung
swinging around the urinal bodies
and one day I know I’ll knock someone
and they’ll piss their legs or they’ll turn slightly
and show another man their full arc
or they’ll fall into their own wet puddle
cock limp and neither of us will look
or he’ll look at me avoiding looking
feigning interest in the hard cream tiles
maybe it’s that I dream of being bumped
knocked from my aim by a stranger
the briefest touch during the private act
the toilet is an intimacy
only shared with parents when you are young
and once again when they are older
and with lovers when say on a Sunday
morning stretching into the bathroom
you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning’s pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside