Your goofy grin is to me
As a charmer's flute is to a snake.
Serenade and ****** me,
Oh mystical one.
Wherever you smile,
Wherever you play,
I will follow.

Inch by inch, mile by mile
Won't you stay for awhile?
Moment by moment, kiss by kiss
I've fallen in love with this

With
Murmmers under flannel sheets
Dark coffee & chocolate treats
The non-space between skin and lips
The gentle curve of twirling hips

...but
Like the tide you pull away
Slowly sadly this cannot stay
Looking back you turn to leave
My heart still sewn to your sleeve

I do not love you in the most common sense of the word.

I do not love you softly with doe eyes and tender kisses.
I do not love you bravely, for there is nothing brave in my actions or words to you.
I do not love you kindly or sweetly, gently or patiently, considerately or reservedly.

I love you like a storm was loosed on my entire being from my first glimpse of you.
I love you like a match loves to be struck, or like a nail loves a hammer.
I love you like a page loves being scarred by the ink of a pen,
and I love you like a pick loves being scraped across old strings over and over again.

I love you violently, and entirely. But, most of all, secretly.

I love you scorchingly and searingly, as if all the pretty words you've ever bestowed upon me were mere kindling.

I love you like an atom must love the universe, a thing by the grace of which it exists, but a thing also which it couldn't possibly ever grasp.

I love you behind my heart and behind my eyes, to shield such a vulnerable thing from the corrosion and harsh grinding of the world.

I love you brokenly, and bitterly, and for always, because I will not admit to loving you at all.

I like you best when you're wrecked and gorgeous.

When your eyes are bright with excitement and half-lidded from drink.
When you're writing hot checks with all the words you'd never say otherwise.

I like you best when your cheeks are flushed and your bottom lip looks like I've just bitten it.

When the words that fall from it are fantastical and outlandish.
When you ask me things like "Will you be my post-apocalypse bride?!" and tell me with slurred and hurried speech that I have the best taste in music.

I like you best when it looks like touching your skin would burn the prints from my fingers.

When you introduce me to the people you call family with liquid pride and wildly exaggerated tales of my heroic deeds.
When I'm not just a nod of your shaggy locks and a tilt of your glass.

These are the times when I can forget the awful nagging voice in my head,
the one that says "Never, never, never"
Because everything about you is tinged with "It could happen any moment now."