I will pour myself
like coffee in your morning cup
and tickle your nose
with my greeting aroma
I will wisp my steam
through your nasal passages
stimulating your system
of sluggish nerves
I will listen to you,
  my favorite song,
keeping beat with my heart,
harmonizing with your hum,
lulling me to sweet oblivion
I will forgive you
as one forgives oneself
because we are human,
vulnerable and feckless
  lonely and restless;
I will lay beside you
all season until sunrise
when light peeks through shade
and fire burns in our eyes
I will fall deep down
the well in your iris
and find myself inside
  guiding us both
towards essential growth,
to intertangle like vines

darling, if you knew
how i shape the sea for you
and my mind is infected
with thoughts of depth so great
i'm diving and never coming back
you make me mad
oh, if you knew
how i'm addicted to you
and the thought of my tenderness
whenever you invade my head
you're this odd sickness
because you only make me feel ill
when you leave

grey skies roll
clouded tropical
undercurrents
of future falls
shrouding skies
and shifting seas
from sad-eyed lowlands
to mountain highs
and we as trees
shiver branches
ever extending
shootings in the breeze
at arm’s reach
we never touch
planted
too far apart
and as such
falling droplets
slip through fingers
and shatter the ground
an endless coming down
our roots soaked through
spent
and craving more
all around
aroused from slumber
the petrichor grows
slowly floating up
and filling the air

I appreciate you for kissing me when no one else would & holding my hand no matter how cold it was;
& for always remembering that i'm more delicate than your lips & this kind of love can only happen once;
& the fact that I always loved you more, but you somehow always showed me more love;
& no matter how angry I made you, you always forgave me because you knew that the ocean would sink itself if it could;
& for always crawling past the bad times, because you knew how beautiful the good times were; because you knew how beautiful we were.

If you ever read this I want you to know:
The one thing I loved more than your smile was the way you smiled at me;
& the reason I couldn't love you any harder was because I put all of my love into writing about you, not actually giving that love to you;
& I forgive you for giving up on me, I would have given up on a fully lit moon also;  i'm sorry I couldn't illuminate the night sky every night for you;
& all of the reasons I couldn't kiss you as hard as I wanted to were all the same reasons why I want to die with you in my arms;
& the way you used to look at me felt like skydiving with no parachute on, or being the last one standing in a game of dodgeball, or sinking to the bottom of a bathtub that's filled with your love & affection, or running a marathon while running on no hours of sleep, or seeing the moon for the first time, or realizing that the love we had is more meaningful than any high paying dead-end job, or traveling the world, or feeling something for somebody they said was an impossible feeling.

If you ever read this I want you to know, thank you, for everything.

small cheap rooms where you walk
down the hall to the
bathroom can seem romantic to
a young writer.
even the rejection slips are
amusing because you are sure that
you are
one of the best.

but while sitting there
looking across the room
at the portable typer
waiting for you on the table
you are really
in a sense
insane

as you wait for
one more night to arrive to sit and
type Immortal Words--but now you
just sit and think about it
on your first afternoon in a strange city.

looking over at the door you
almost
expect a beautiful woman to walk in.

being young
helps get you through
many senseless and terrible
days.

being old
does
too.