If I could explain to someone,
They'd fall in love with you as I am,
I find you so irresistible I
Want to kiss you and say,
I don't tell the world about you,
For they'd fall in love with you as I am.

There are many firsts,
a first date.
A sloppy wet first kiss.
A first boyfriend or girlfriend.
Things you wish you could store up in a snowball.
To trap them in a place where time has no power.
Still. Frozen. Kept like figurines.

Time seems stretched out like a string,
Taut and endless, spiraling into knots and tangles.
We take what we can get.
It might be the last smile on our face.
Happy ever after,
Or the end of all we know.

So many lasts sprinkled like salt on salads,
The last time you ever saw a loved one's face.
Last time you loved.
It could be the last heartache,
But you would never know.

Time is but a lifeline to present and past.
It can be snatched right out of your hands.
Gone as fast as lightning,
Too powerful to contain in any vessel.
Time can be everything and also nothing.

Some nights I’m not filled with words,
I’m just filled with so much of you.
You’re making more space in this ribcage;
it was always saving a spot
for your heart anyways.
You give the moon light to reflect,
and I swear the stars would fall for you tonight.

you are like a whirlpool--
silly me for falling in,
my ship has sunken down
into the ocean that is
you,
ive never been much for
swimming,
ecspecially when i
actually want to
drown.

There’s something about you that
makes me want to write
        bad poetry
and half-assed short stories.  

Something about you that
makes me want to take all my
unspoken words and turn them
into something beautiful,
something worthwhile.

You make me want to be an artist
like Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath;
you make me want to create.

Maybe it’s that blue wave
that crashes down like
an incoming tide on the beach—
        your eyes
when you look at me in
a certain way, in
a certain light.

Or maybe it’s
the way that you say
my name and then say all
those horrible things that make
me want to rip something
        open.

Those words that rip me open.

You make beautiful stanzas get stuck in my
head like lyrics to a bad pop song;
I can’t erase them and the
only way I can think of to cope with it
is to write them down like a schoolgirl
with a well worn diary.

I think I might as well have hypergraphia.

I am an unprofessional
medical doctor with
a pen, paper, and
Word Document
suffering from a form of
verbal ***** because I
can’t possibly think of a way to
        speak my mind.

I think I would make a very good mute.

I wish I lacked a voice box
because then I wouldn’t have to
be the one that has to
say all the right, comforting things
at the all the right times
and all the right places.

Sometimes it feels as if I’m
being eaten from the inside out
by some sort of paratrophic organism
that sits atop my frontal lobe and
dictates my life and fluctuates my
anxiety and I can’t even think about
some things anymore because of this
nervous clench I get in my gut when
I let my thoughts get too jumbled.

But you—you make me want to write
the most heartfelt and sappy sentences
and you make me want to
be more than just ordinary.

You make me want to be extraordinary.  

I guess that what I’m writing is
an apology in the shape of
a few stanzas and a few metaphors.

And this is an “I forgive you” for that night
that we spent outside your house
arguing over the stupidest of things,
so stupid that I can hardly
remember a single word I said to you.

Nothing gratifying is ever
painless to obtain
and I want to be a fighter like
Hercules or Alexander the Great.

I want to be extraordinary with you.

I wrote you out word by word
hoping for half as much.
I saw in you what I wanted
paid in full.
Signing up for credit to afford you
going door to door for
bottles and change.
Digging deep to deserve you.
There was a moment
I thought I saw the same old thing
wrapped in your pretty package.
Then I looked out of myself
and saw inside you
and my words became
crayon scribbles
on the closet wall.
Your words poured into me
out of me, tears
lasting not a stitch
on my cheek
caught by your tongue
as our breath became one.