I cut my hair just to see if it would grow back.
It was long, thick, and somewhere between
Light brown and strawberry blonde.
I hung my head upside down
And ran my fingers through the eighteen inches
Of snigs and snags and knots
For the final time.
It wasn't silky.
It wasn't particularly soft.
I gathered it into a ponytail
And
Chop, chop, chop
Thousands of tiny hairs cried out
And tumbled to the floor en masse.
I shook my head about
Flinging my shorter hairs into my eyes.
I glowed with the feeling of liberation
While I shivered from the cold on my bare neck
So I stared at the fallen golden rope
Part gleefully, part mournfully
And I waited,
Warily and giddily and wonderingly,
For my hair to grow back.

I tell you this, not to explain
That old photo of me where I look like a boy,
But so that you can understand that
If one day I decide to push you away,
I'll only be waiting.

Broken time watches warily
Godless granite-hard cruel
Unrelenting

Crooked finger shall give
Abundance of clever foggy portraits
Vaguely quick spun words
Just words

Hopeless downcast downtrodden
Shifting swimming eyes
Thrown scattered shot
Up

Careless siege of swill
Scarlet shiny garish
Plucked and fussed and
Cosseted

Gone gone gone
Vanished brashly veiled
Never more

Holder of my heart
Though perhaps one day we shall part
Today we are together
Though one day there will be mountains
Insurmountable obstacles to overcome
Today we hold each other
One day
Perhaps one day soon
There will be a biting cold
At this moment there is warmth
And tenderness
So seek warmth in my embrace
And I in yours
We will keep out the cold together

Love is a word
A single entity
To signify an ocean of meaning
It is too small to communicate
All the emotion felt with every utterance
The quickening of the heart
The soaring of the soul
As the body falls through nothingness
No word
No phrase
No book
Could explain what it truly is
It simply has to be known
So perhaps
For now
Love
Will do just fine

Christmas without you feels wrong.
I don't  know why, it's only one day
Among three hundred and sixty-four others.
It's not very different from those others.
Sure, there's eggnog and bows
And fireplaces and singing
And beef roasts and hams
And traditions a mile high.
You've never even been there before.
I've never seen how you fit in
With the bows and the ham
But I'd imagine you'd fit very splendidly
And it may seem strange,
But you're missing from somewhere
You've never been.
And all I want is you here beside me,
On this day I've never spent with you.
I want it badly.
But I shouldn't be so greedy.
Each day I spend with you is already Christmas.
Even in July.

Modern words do no good in love.
Cars, jeans, mini skirts, flirting, and texts
Pale in comparison to
Carriages, slacks, petticoats, courting, and letters
We traded something in for our knowledge, industry, and democracy:
Romance.
Love and beauty and honor have flitted away
On wings of steel.

Is true love possible in a world
With such shallow, lacking words?

I can not let you braid my hair,
I do not love you yet.

You can muss it and flip it and twist it around
I can undo that with a shake of my head.

Hand over hand,
Strand over strand,
Weaving something out of nothing
Making it your own.

You braid sloppily.
I know.
I've heard.

And a messy, knotted, tangled braid
Can be hard to unravel
Chunks of hair ripped out
Fingers trapped in knots.
It's an unpleasant business.

So you can not braid my hair
Until I'm ready
For it to stay there.