So sleep, my love, just sleep,
I'll be here when you wake,
I promise not to die,
If you just take a break.

I should not speak of you,
I only talk in poems when I do.
Not the kind I'm proud of,
Or that make a poignant point,
But the sort that make me blush,
And that I burn after I write.

They're a little bit like this one, really,
The poems that come to mind,
Every time I think of you...
Which is all the time.

I've a million things I'd like to say,
But not one of them would matter.
All the words and all the dreams,
spilled forth from my lips,
my heart, my soul,
Laid bare before you in simple language,
spoken word,
For you to disregard, tear apart,
Consume wholly, indelicately.
I've a million hopes I'd like to tell you,
But not one of them would be.
All the thousand thoughts woven
From threads of you,
of want, of need.
Stripped naked in your presence,
a screenplay,
Of my love, unfounded,
For you to critique,
Rip from page to page.

Like the breaking of fine china,
How it never is as pretty when in pieces.
So too my heart,
So too my love,
So too my wants, my words, unspoken.

I do not listen with my ears anymore, I listen with my toes,
I listen with my eyes, my lips, my very skin.
I listen with my heart, I listen with my soul.
I hear things deep in songs I can't stand,
In the hushed whispers of the wind,
Even in the rabble of traffic, the echoes of
My shoes on the pavement when I walk alone.
I retrace our steps from that day in the lazy sunlight.
I listen to the birds who have too much to say,
They remind me of how I talk too much,
Especially when I'm around you.
I hear your heartbeat in the twilight insects,
Listen for your voice as I lay in the grass.
I hear it if I close my eyes, it lives there,
In that place on the hill, in the clover that grows,
In the butterflies we watched too long, in the smell
Of the oak tree overhead.
I hold it close to my heart, I sing that song I don't know,
A song I can't stand, because here you sang it,
Your eyes trained on me, I could feel them then.
And now, wishing you were here with me,
I listen with my very skin.