right after we reach that point where for the first month all I want to do
is explain the same things over and over to you, whether it be the things
you said last week or the things you said just today, or the way I feel
about you in fifteen different languages (with the first 13 still being English)
and that 34% of the time the water will be too hot and I will come
on too strong and all of my poems will be these drawling confessions
of love, because I do, I love. And it will never be that I fall in love easy
but more that I see the wounds in others, their quick tempers and shortages, the vices they pull from their back pockets when
dead friends come alive in conversations
the night he died he--


The truth is, before you date me--
the first forty-seven dinner places
will likely be Subway and Chiles
I won't eat onions in front of you
and if my carpets aren't vacuumed
you're not coming over.

the truth is
I spend a lot of money
on things I shouldn't and
will always opt for breakfast foods
or a jar of peanut butter over a
meal, furiously switch through
harmonies to Traveling Soldier by
the Dixie Chicks

the truth is


the truth is.

These are only guidelines and I am more predictable. My fantasies include meeting your family,
cooking with your mother
and several disjointed memories
strung together in this big awkward conglomeration of
sensations and fabrics, the erratic heartbeat of
every subway pigeon in New York
who lies to itself about it's
own desensitization
but the trains still rattle
their bones and the quick winds
still tear through their feathers
and each day manages to feel
like sets of ten minutes that
each last a year.