i think about you. a lot. and i don't mean at cliche 2am where poets taint their hands with ink and paper cuts. no. i think about you when i look at the sun rising at 5am. when i make coffee at 6. when bon iver comes up on the radio and i tap my fingers along the tune or when i read your favorite book and on every page i search for fragments of your fingerprint. i think about you at noon. because i'd rather have your lips than my tuna sandwich. and at 2pm because you texted "i miss you" and i replied "i love you". at 5pm as the sun slowly disappears on the horizon and is replaced by a blanket of stars. i think about you at 10 in the evening when i'm alone looking at the night sky and the incandescent moon wishing i could trace your palms the way we tend to trace constellations. i think about you at 3am when i say my prayers and i whisper your name to God with a ghost of a smile. i tell Him i must have done something good to deserve you. it seems that you're stuck in my brain. heck, you're in my veins. and i don't ever want you out of my system.

we present ourselves as perfect manuscripts
nobody sees the crumpled rough drafts and messy handwriting
scattered around the bedroom carpet at home.

nobody has seen the way i've
scratched out parts of myself
that didn't fit into the high school mold
then the parts that didn't fit into my suitcase when i moved away from home

nobody has seen the revisions i've made
do i sound too formal, am i too quiet, do i need to be a little bit funnier in order to be considered acceptable art?

i've thrown entire scenes of my life into the trash
because i don't want anybody to see them and i am ashamed

i sit for hours staring at blank pages wondering how anyone could ever find me interesting enough to spend time with

do you ever feel that way, too?

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands