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.
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