i’m 19 years old
and i’ve never written a love poem that didn’t taste like loneliness or regret
i was born with a sad mouth
the kind that holds nothing but tempesteous storms of gray
the kind that curses god, doesn’t believe in fate, and kisses lips more crooked than my own
you see
it took me 21 days to squeeze the ink for this poem out of my pen for you
because i’ve never written a love poem for someone
and because i can’t put you into words
but i’m going to try
1. you are the run on sentence that leaves me nothing but breathless
when you speak, i see colors i never even knew existed
i would lift my head to you if you said my name even with a broken neck
i couldn’t sleep the first week we met
because i knew the empty space in my bed was meant to be filled with the curve of your back
and that your smile was the only sunrise i’d be able to wake up to
i spend all my spare time collecting the different ways you’ve called me beautiful to wear as a golden chain around my neck, close to the pulse in my throat, and thump in my heart
as a reminder of how you’ve made me feel alive again
2. when we first kissed
i couldn’t even find the right words to string together to describe how i discovered home on your lips
i love you speechless and i am terrified for just that reason
and i don’t know if i will ever be able to forklift the reasons why out of my chest
but here’s a start
you want to know why i’m scared? i’m scared because for me
love was always a lot like throwing yourself off the edge of a building
and i had a nasty habit of falling for ghosts who couldn’t catch me
but your hands,
your hands weren’t callused, they were soft
they gave me amensia of all the times i shattered against the pavement
the first time i held them they gave me so much reckless abandon that i knew
if i took my heart and catapulted it to atlanta, new york, london, or cuba
you’d be able to catch it blindly
so please just outstretch your arms and do it
3. i know i said earlier that i didn’t believe in fate
but that was before i started writing this
and because you exist
i believe in fate now
because someone, somewhere
made you carefully, painfully, slowly, and deliberately just for me
because there is no other explanation
for the way my bones ticked like the angry hands of a clock,
counting down the seconds until you found me
i believe in fate now because
the moment we met
the possibility of you and i even breathing the same air
and the number of hellos and goodbyes we will exchange
must have been thought about for centuries
when we were nothing but dust
4. if i could take a minute
somehow place all the galaxies into the palms of my hand and rename every star, every constellation after each moment we’ve had and the little things no one notices about you
like how when you blush, you say “oh gawsh” and it reminds me of a bad western movie and my childhood innocence all wrapped up in one
or how you hate being interrupted
how you have a scar on your abdomen from that surgery you had when you were little
or how you wear bruises and bloodied knuckles from all the times you’ve hated yourself
i would do it
i would make this universe into a story only the two of us could understand
a story that says,
i love you…
for as long as you want me to (k.w)