If I love you
I love you diagonally
The rest of my life is vertical
Tall and straight as an arrow pointed skyward,
But a line like that is too thin,
Our love would be balanced on the point,
Our love would fall to the side.
And I can’t love you horizontally either.
Nothing so flat as that,
Not so evenly connected with the ground, no,
Our love has to have some lift to it,
Our love would go nowhere on a flat line.
No, our love is diagonal.
Our love points neither up or down or left or right,
It points in the way it itself choses
Our love rolls down a *****
Gaining speed as it goes
Till it skitters and bounces and points itself
In a new diagonal.
I love you diagonally.

I smile as I raise my eyes
To the vast indifferent clear blue skies.
Too thick to see through, too thin to touch,
The color blue is nothing new.
And every day, it hides the stars,
Whose waltzing passage sketches scars
On tender flesh, with careless force.
The earth, the sky, the stars, and I,
Lie wondering, waiting, contemplating,
In silence so sharp I start to long
To sell my soul away for a song.
But no one's buying, only betting
And I don't know the odds.
But I cast the dice, and don't think twice,
And leave them where they lie.
Then leave the table to walk outside
And smile at the sky.

I want to share my light with you.
I want to put it in a jar,
With little holes in the lid to let it breathe.
A little part of me that you can keep.
I want to take it out and share it,
Trap it in a bottle for all to see,
The little light that shines in me,
And shows me the way.
I don’t mind making it a little dimmer,
If I could just make your life a little brighter.
I want to set it on the stand beside your bed
To keep you warm and safe at night,
To remind you,
When no one is around,
That I still love you.

She’s not your knight in shining armor,
No prince upon a valiant steed.
Just see the way your eyes disarm her,
She’s helpless when you’re most in need.

Her castle has ramparts that crumble and fall
Whenever your gazes meet.
She’s strong enough to stand up tall
But not to sweep you off your feet.

She couldn’t climb to the top of your tower
To save you from a dragon’s wrath.
And she never had the power
To clear the brambles from your path.

She can’t save you from your plight.
She’s not your prince, she’s not your knight.
But she’ll try to be true and good,
And try to love you like she should.

I felt it buzz
When I thought of you.
I thought you were thinking of me too,
And sent me a message
Out of the blue.
And it felt so unfair
That when I picked up the phone,
Nothing was there.