You are more poetic than Donne
Smoother than Shakespeare

You are more romantic than Austen
More mysterious than Doyle

You are stronger than Neruda
More interesting than Vonnegut.

You are
Wasted.

You
and
I

become sweetgrass
become riverwater
become cryogenics

Not
Frozen in time
Not
Slowed, stopped, surrendered.

A new field
With hope.
Timeless.

You? And me?
Yes.

I love the sound of clicking keyboards.
Of beating hearts. Of waking up next to you.

I love the steady, the whole
The more than I thought I could have.

The sounds of you and me, at night
In the morning
In the afternoon, skyrockets flying.

I love the sounds of your lips on my shoulder
Of your fingers in my hair.
Of our skin combining.

I love the noises of now.

My shallow breaths
Not in enough, not out enough
Drown me in oxygen, not h20.
Forgetting what "slow down" means
Is a dangerous thing.

And my hammering heart
Too fast, too hard
Pounding out an imprint on my shirt
An engraved bloated pear, for all to see.
Does it starve when not in love?

And you, there.
Slowed down, not as time
As an individual. A marker of time.
A maker of metaphor.
Remind me to breathe
Remind me to
s l o w d o w n.

And me, here.
Too fast, too slow.
A potato imprint
Of changing, of change.
A penny for a thought
A nickel for a word
A quarter for a second
Stolen from my mind.

I
Don't
Need
You.

A beautiful thing, really;
Security for you.
I must want you then, if I stay.
I must be there by choice.

The thing is, right now
I don't really want you either.
I know I will again soon.
I always go back to it.

But you keep pushing me farther
And I'm a quick learner.
You would be wise to remember: I am not a guarantee.

So maybe sometimes
I dig in your eyes
Half-believing falsehoods are physical things
And if I just look hard enough, I will find them.
I can pan them out, like gold in Oregon Trail
But really more like bugs in my food.

So maybe sometimes
I breathe, in/out/in/out
Before I tell you I love you
Because maybe I'm still a little afraid.
Because I don't tell people that
And I don't like to be vulnerable.

So maybe sometimes
If your arms aren't a vise at night
I wonder if you are trying to give me the option to escape.
And maybe I wonder if you need one.
Maybe I wonder if I should treat you like a genie:
"I wish for your freedom."
The problem being I don't wish for that, at all.

So maybe sometimes
I want to remind you
That you aren't chained to me
And there's always an out, if you want it.
Not that I do.

It's just that maybe sometimes
I have trouble believing in you
And it's not your fault
It's just in my head
It's just in my history.

But maybe sometimes,
Like you said once,
I don't like myself enough to believe
You would want to stay.

Maybe sometime I'll feel like you want me too
Because I know it's all in my head
But you're not very good at helping
(No offense).

I would never stay mad at you
But I probably could.
I think it's because you don't mean to do what you do
Which is actually nothing at all.
I guess that's the problem.

It's hard to feel anything without writing it off when you're so self-aware
But it's hard to feel some things all the time
So I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't really matter what I think.

I just wish you wanted me with you
Or you wanted you in me
Or really that the words "want" and "me" (or you?)
Would ever go together at all.

I don't blame you
As in, I'm not trying to accuse
That's just the way I feel
But it doesn't really matter what I think about that.