Infatuation.
It’s a girthy, 5-syllable word and you’re
In a fat, juicy, situation.

It’s a swollen, darkened fruit
That begs to be taken completely,
Flesh devoured entirely.

But it’s a trap.

The sweet and tangy blood of it
That dribbles down your chin
To your neck
To your *******
To your heart
To your stomach
To your hips
To your groin
To your ***
Down your thighs
To your nervous toes
Is not love.

Nobody wants to hear that.

But some day
- If you are incredibly lucky -
You will look at your maroon-stained palms
And the dry, sticky rivers of years running down your wrists
And laugh until you cry when you realize
That you could wash your whole body
Because love is not in the juice.

It is not your addiction,
Your summer picking,
Your hungry belly,
Your well of adrenaline,
Your rushing of heartbeats,
Your tangling of bodies,
Your jealousy, yearning,
Nor pride.

If you are incredibly lucky
You will suddenly know love.
As silent, simple, and strong
As the fabric of the universe itself.

When at night green seas touch the moon
pulling toward the shore, shiny creatures crawl the sands
in shells of watery homes, soon to drift away
swaying seaweed clings to metal rings of wooden boats and oars
Moon tides, ever pushing, pulling
transient sandy shores, and sings the light to follow
worlds emerge from dark of night, water filling up
the hollows

I was going to write a long poem about expectations
and how they poison perceptions and **** relationships,
but I realized that my expectations of the would-be piece
are what kept it from ever happening;

I wrote out a few pages of material, but I highlighted it all and replaced it with what you see now.
Who knows?

Perhaps that's more poignant than what I would have written.

So many girls have that waterslide nose
the one you had, the shape that tethers on the end
a curly-cue your teardrops pool in sometimes:

so many girls could look just like you
and I might actually acknowledge their blue eyes
not assume they are as brunette as the wool
below their clothes

but none of those girls would know my secrets or
obsession with Build-a-Bear bunnies
because they were never open on our birthday.