I recently traded my air mattress
For a big, thick, fancy one.
We had to heave it up the stairs and around the bends,
Laughing and sweating and crying the whole way.
My arms were so sore, and we were all so tired,
But I slept oh so sound.

Golden boy, my ray of sunshine,
You'll never know how much
Your radiance soothes my lows.
It seems so simple,
A furry back on my toes,
A lapping tongue, a wet black nose,
But you're so much more to me
Golden boy, my ray of sunshine,
And you'll never know.

Joe is the first thing on my mind
When I open my eyes in the morning.
I long for his warm embrace,
His electrifying kiss,
The smell of his presence
So familiar to me,
Enveloping me with a sense of comfort.

Without him my day is sad,
My mind foggy and groggy.
But most days Joe is here for my taking.
I sip him in slowly
With a mug more than half full,
Giving me that bit of motivation
That life without him lacks.

I've never been good at hellos.
There is something heavy
In holding conversations
For weeks, or months, or years
Under the notion that some day,
Goodbye will come.

When Goodbye comes I'm never ready,
But I always try to be.
I am 10 minutes late for our date
Taking all of the wrong roads
Just hoping to throw Goodbye off my track.
I release the butterflies in my stomach
In effort to protect my delicate parts
From Goodbye. I fill their void with letters.
Like the giant chocolate ones
You got me on Valentine's day
That spelled "YOU CUTE."
Then, my biggest fear was you
Asking me to stick around. How ironic.
I take L's and the O's and the V's and the E's
And the G O O D B Y E's
Sitting so patiently on the tip of my tongue and swallow them
Unit they're so jumbled
That I forget the difference between the two.
I slur them all together, misconstrued.

You deserve better. I'm sorry.
I know it is not lovely to try to hold
Someone who is on lockdown.
I am scared of what I might catch
If I open that door.
Or worse, who I might lose.

And so I stay silent.
I pull up my mask and
Sit my back against the door
Listening to the lovely way you
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I'll pass you jumbled romance notes
Through the cracks, and you'll smile.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
But you won't understand
Knock. Knock.
How much you mean to me
Knock.
Because I will not open the door
Until you are gone.

He says I'm a catch.
I say, "Like corona?"
And laugh contagiously
But he doesn't catch it.

When I fell for him
He wasn't watching.
I just scraped my knees,
And got dirt in my blood.

Turkey vultures perch in their trees -
On two different branches,
In two different trees
Of the same kind.
Two black dots in a pale blue sky.
Each looking past the other one
From their own vantage.
Unfamiliar to the shape
Of their own beak. They do not beckon.
No motive. They will not become
Anything out of the ordinary.
They sit and wait for life to happen,
Or rather, for it to not. Call it oppurtunity.
They flutter their wings and soar
Only towards death. When they find it,
Tearing the flesh from the bone,
Devouring the innards in ghastly gulps,
Pecking til the bones are bare
And their stomachs are full.