Lover Girl Words - Hello Poetry

Jul 16

Kayli Kilzer

When I miss you,
I read the poetry you send me.

I start by running
my tongue through the words,
in the space between the letters,
making sure to hold each sentence
between my teeth to
not waste a single drop of flavor.

I then take each page and
hang it up to dry,
so the words don’t bleed off
when I’m done tasting them.
I wring out each tear and
replace them with gentle touch,
to preserve your craft for
years to come.

Once dry it is easy to
pull the stanzas from the clothesline,
and to burrow under each line,
laying my head on the period
and finding warmth in the
way you tell me
you love me.

Your words sketch a map and
X marks the treasure
I find in us.

It is easy to reach out my hand
and find yours in the darkness,
when your poetry is there to
guide the way.

Jul 16

Kayli Kilzer

Missing you in a big city

A heavenly grotesque poem about being apart from you while I am on vacation

I feel the familiar stretch of
you extending your fingers from
beyond my iris,
Puncturing my cornea
to try and grasp the Boston Harbor
That I stare across

You draw my upper lip
Into your mouth as you kiss me,
Your tongue sliding
behind my front teeth to
Taste the ice cream lingering
On my tongue from the street
Vendor on the corner of Fenway Park

As you breakdance through the
Canyons in my brain
Your steps accentuate the beats of the
Drumming in my ears
I think of how you would love the
Sounds I am hearing right now

It’s as if my senses only exist to
Pretend you’re next to me,
When we are apart I only
Enjoy things because
I know you would too

All things beautiful
Remind me of you
And you remind me of
All things beautiful

Jul 16

Kayli Kilzer

I Want

I don't want you
to softly kiss my forehead.
I want a thousand bee stings
with your lips
in rapid succession
till my heart and face are
swollen with you.

I never knew I wanted that until you did it.

I don’t want you to
softly drag your nails over my skin—
who am I kidding,
of course I do.

But when it is you
it feels like you are
sculpting me from clay,
like you are finger painting
a landscape and using your prints
to draw rivers.

I want to show up
at your door with flowers and
see you on your tippy toes
staring through the glass
with flowers to give me.

They’re both plum lilies
and both bought because
no perfect person should go
without flowers on their countertops.

I want to hear you **** in your sleep
and snore simply because it means
you’re next to me and
that music is more heavenly
than the silence that accompanies your absence.

I want to go to the store with you
and feel maternal towards
all the stuffed animals that
lay piled in the kids section,
and buy each one and say
“this is our last stuffie, no more”
before returning the next week
on a quest to adopt one more.

I want to walk through an art museum
and be convinced you’re a time traveler
because how could the murals possibly
be so beautiful if they weren’t inspired by you.

I watch in real time as sunflowers
turn their petals towards your face
which seems impossible but
they know as well as I do
that the brightest light is within you.

I want to learn what it feels like
to have my skin stick to yours
and to feel the sting of peeling you
off of me in the morning.

Nothing is complicated when it
comes to what I want in this life.
There’s only one common denominator—
I just want you.

May 14

Kayli Kilzer

A Cowboy in Tennis Shoes

I.

My full time job is watching sand blow in the wind
but that is normal when you wear cowboy shoes.

I would wear boots like my comrades or spurs
but I walk a mile in your soles instead.

Lead-trodden, of quicksand glory,
walking feels like falling and I grasp onto anything I can.

But you pitched a tent in each grain and
sand is not meant for catching.

Cowboys don’t cry and so I built this plateau filled life
and fold criss-crossed, wrung-out flannels for one.

Fire flies and time dries and I see your face
in every passing cloud and cactus spine.

I am not a real cowboy because I wear shoes
and this life isn’t really mine but still the sand blows.

II.

I don’t know why we can’t just try, because what if I am missing out on the greatest thing to happen in my life? Her words bounce like rocks in my brain and dent each surface they hit but my eyes are as dry as sand, and I am not allowing myself to think anything and so I feel everything.

Why can’t     I try.

I want to buy a crab to keep in my pants so that the pinching keeps me awake in this expiring dream. Promise that when you are ready, you will find me. I vow that day to become a cowboy in tennis shoes.
Heat contained salt on lips—

leaving         something       so      good    can   only  hurt sobad.

I keep adding songs to a playlist unlistened to, a time capsule of teleportation that could inject your unused love drug into my brain. Teeth marks  t a t t o e d  on my collarbone and a r/e/v/o/l/v/e/r in my eardrum call me to the life of caked mud. It all drowns. Horses and spat gum and your name I threw in the river that I wish would bob to the surface.

III.

Tongue on top lip and spicy spider-like showmance,
A web of tastebuds and sticky fingers spool

in 1950s romance film.
Your name is mine in seventy different languages,

In my past life I hated cowboys and
everyone that wasn’t you.

We two step under fluorescent skylights and kiss
in soaking clothes and absorb grass stains on our skin.

Every book ever written is about us and
tonight we are cowboys under the evening strawberry sky.

In every life you nap in my shadow and
God stitches your outline to my silhouette Peter-Pan style,
and I harvest your veins and braid them into mine to make
a cross-hatched blanket I can sit on in the sand.

IV.

I open my mouth to swallow sand and it tastes of rubber and sweat and anything else your tennis shoes may contain. It may be all that's left of you and so instead of necking it down I hold a mouthful in the space between my teeth and tongue and lay myself down on your shadow to sleep.

May 14

Kayli Kilzer

A Tapestry of Skin

I wish someone could throw us both
into a melting *** or fiery inferno,
so that our skin would melt off our bones;
When we are dragged from the embers
our muscles would be fused in a way
They couldn’t tell your skin from mine.

I want our tendons to be French braided,
Our curled hair to be stirred into the
membrane of our shared bloodstream.

Sometimes when you drag your fingers across my skin,
I feel my skin shifting like sand;
Your simple touch leaving chasms within
the soft clay of my malleable complexion,
My body forever memorizing
your fingers swimming through my hair.

I don’t know how to tell you that I
equate your touch with sipping
The Nectar Of The Gods,
How the graze of your pinky finger
reminds me of
being swallowed by sunlight
and digested into a Lunar Eclipse.

If I could puncture your palm with a needle,
and stitch your hand to mine,
I would have already knitted our fingers together
to create the world’s warmest tapestry of
Skin and Love and fingernails.

May 14

Kayli Kilzer

Secondhand Fairytale

Peering through lenses, I see myself
legs swung over cliffside mountain shelf.

She holds her hand and I allow a smile,
She who is me, has deserved love for a while.

Choking on rain and the smile filled moon,
They dance over dewdrops and hearts are cocooned.

This is their fantasy hand crafted world,
Books they have written and princess swords twirled.

Two poets in love, a trope unheard,
Run hips under fingers, darlings’ skin lines are blurred.

I love to watch my life through a secondhand source,
A real life fairytale, running its course.

— The End —