His hands are long,
calloused and inviting.
Scars tell stories,
scattered
across his knuckles.

He has one hand cradled in the other,
tapping and rubbing
his palm
with his fingers.

His mind is a jungle:
heavy, sticky, lush,
challenging to navigate,
surrounded by undecayed green
and unobstructed sea.

“Are you anxious?”
His hands are moving rapidly,
yellow parrotbills
flitting in and out of the tall tree trunks
and violet, epiphytic orchids of his mind.

Turning to face me,
he stretches his lips into a smile.
He assures me that he is fine,
but he doesn’t see any birds.

like sand I watch you slip through my fingers again, and again, and again. ill pick you up once more, a little tighter this time, but my fight never seems to be quite strong enough for you. // I'd love you if you would please just let me.

Remember that time you made the wish?

     I make a lot of wishes.

The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.

     What do you think I wished for?

I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.

     I wished for what I always wish for.
     I wished for another poem.

Poetry is just emotion distilled,
but before that, the cup must be spilled.
Passion and pain, must come and go,
before the poetry shall flow.

And when the world stops so still,
and it all becomes a frozen chill,
along comes emotion to thaw it out,
and then a ripple comes about.

And ripples grow to so much more
and so there is, poetry to adore.

Sometimes I think about
the structure of atoms
and how difficult it can be
to tell the difference between me
and the cantaloupe I just ate
and where I end
and the sunlight begins.
And I wonder
if maybe when you kiss me
you leave behind pieces of yourself
on my tongue
and that’s why I remember
exactly how you taste
no matter how long it’s been.

Sometimes I think about
quantum entanglement
and how two different particles
can be inextricably and inexplicably
tied to each other
no matter their physical distance.
And I wonder
if maybe a tiny piece of your left iris
is entangled with an atom
in the muscle of my cheek
and that’s why
I can’t help but smile
when you look at me.

Sometimes I think about
our understanding of DNA
and how so much of it we call “junk”
because we don’t know what it does.
And I wonder
if maybe years from now
they’ll be able to read my base pairs
like a novel
and some scientist
will be able to look at them and say
“This,
just here,
this is how we know
the subject fell in love.”