Laura Thompson

I Don’t Want to Know

When he tells me

he’s been with a dolphin

the way he’s just been with me,

I knock him off the bed, can’t believe

all that I couldn’t see

in the soil-brown oceans

of his eyes. He tells me

he thought I’d understand—

why would he think I’d

understand an act illegal in

all the countries where I’d be

brave enough to live?

I don’t want to know

how it was done, who saw,

how much it hurt, how good it felt.

If I don’t know how

it felt, I can believe

it didn’t feel like I feel.

I don’t want to know

that dolphins are like

us, they do it out of season

like us, bulls and cows, boys

and girls, like us, even when

they’re only one day old.

He tells me it happened

as the sun set, gray

belly flushed to rose, fins stroked

the smoothness of his skin

the way I love to run

my hand across his chin.

He tells me if she

didn’t want to, fifty

teeth and seven hundred

pounds would have told

him No—look how easily

I threw him off the bed.

I don’t want to know

how her brain has a cortex,

ridges like my brain, all that room

for conscious thought. If I

don’t know she can think, I could

think I know better what she wants.

He tells me she didn’t think

it was wrong, why should I?

If I don’t think about the things

done to me I didn’t think were wrong,

I could believe she knew

what I couldn’t know.

I don’t want to know

any more about what I can’t

understand. If I don’t know,

I can be with him, believe

there’s nothing wrong with me.