I write you love poems
Because I need to shape the tumultuous feelings
That occupy my heart and head
At all hours of dawn and day.
The words beg to spill out.

If I had my way,
I would craft words that sway
your heart and mind to think of
me
as consumed in thought as I am of
you.

Two day ago in therapy I wrote you a love poem:
A physics equation quantifying the emotional clarity that is brought by your proximity,
With love as a fundamental constant and a scalar summation of circumstances' mental momentum.

The next evening,
You told me you were going to sleep with a friend,
But the thought of sharing you makes me viscerally sick,
But worse is the ache, the knowledge
That you crave their touch too.

It's a slither underneath my ribs,
Tensing pressure that constricts my lungs and crushes the bone,
Venom through my veins,
Stopping at my heart.

But,
Love is constant,
Love is kind.
And, god, I've fallen in love with a selfish serpent.

I never take my tea bag out of the cup,
a conscious act of defiance and empathy for leaves with no belonging,
until it becomes face-twistingly bitter.

Sunlight hasn't woken yet, but we have.
There's steaming tea, ink-covered notes, soft keyboard taps,
delicate thread stitching together an all-consuming comfort.
Even the wood knows to creak in hushed tones.

I never take my tea bag out of the cup,
but one of you has taken to removing it when I'm not looking,
sparing me with kind eyes and kinder hands.

Before the floor creaks and groans,
Before either of us wake with a smile or a sigh,
(Before it's too bright for you to say "I need to buy some curtains!")
It rushes by, whipping the wind,
In an explosive noise against rails older than us,
But I am not sure if the sound arises
From it slicing through the air, or
From it forcing a new pattern of breath in the wake of its motion.

But,
Before the floor creaks and groans,
Before you wake with a smile or a sigh,
Before it's too bright, too chilly, or too late- no, just right
I rest my head against your chest
And I can hear the tracks
The gentle thrum and hum and shake,
Beating at a constant rate.

I am breathless with gratitude that I caught this train on time.