I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

"But what if we're wrong?"
It was silent
But her thoughts echoed around in my head as we laid on top of her pickup truck
I swatted at the eighteenth mosquito chewing on my leg
I don't want this to be love

We were tangled up in the acoustic music they play on the radio on Sunday mornings
She was trying to dream up something clever to write about
And I was pretending I could learn to play guitar through osmosis,
As if blending myself in with the harmonies, finding her in every lyric, and sheer willpower would give me wings or at least magic guitar hands

She set the alarm, checked it over and over
She was not going to be late for her first day
I told her I'd be asleep when she got home, she told me she knew
I told her to wake me up

I wasn't looking for perfect
Perfect really only applies in first year physics courses
After that, we learn to fall in love with "rough around the edges" or "unique" or "unfinished"
As if their life is a puzzle that we need to complete
Just so you know, it isn't

She bought me breakfast and dropped me off
She used to tell me she loved me, but I know she didn't
She does now, so she doesn't have to say it anymore
When I said, "love," before, I didn't really mean it
Not like I mean loving the garden on the balcony of her apartment or thunderstorms in May
Even if I was a puzzle that she completed (and I'm not saying that I am), we didn't need any glue to fit perfectly

She seeks the thermal column.
Spiraling upward, realizing a panorama of her domain.
Perfect paradox, the effortless grace of flight and the harbinger of death.
She subsists on the rot of nature, continuation of the life cycle.
Untouchable of the firmament.

Evening docks
like a desolate ship,
indigo and monolithic,

its umbral sails
swelling above
the distant hips of
a titanic continent.

Sleep tastes like a mossy anchor;
it lurches, shifts, and slips into gear—
the sound of stars grinding on stars.

I sail across an ocean of teeth.

I acquiesce. I drown

in the velvet
whirlpool of
your absence.

Is it even possible to contemplate a sea of promises unfolding petal by petal like an open book made of glass?  If I saw my world as a heartbeat would tonight be different than the flight of my past?

Why should everything dwell among a skin of silent beauty while the fire waits for meaning from a grain of sand?  Is it because our eyes lack hearts that sing to the butterflies as they arrive and land?

Should I hide behind the universe of whispering trees and brush my hands across the doors that keep me wishing? Until, I wonder if I’ll run out of rhymes if I part myself from my inner beauty misting.

I have secrets I hear laughing full of words that speak to me as a lion knocks down the door of breaking all the rules.  Still, I want to touch the glory of solitude’s lovely face and dance with mischief’s fool.