I pepper
Your face
With soft flecks
Of kisses
In search
Of the spots
Free
Of acne cream
(Rarer than the spots
Free of acne),

Like it's a game.
My freckled,
Toothy queen
Is still behind,

four years,
and love swells
From out
                  Bellies
we have in common.

I will tell you
                        inane fun facts
That I'm over-brimmed with
About what you didn't notice in the film
The first time you saw it,
Because you suspended your disbelief;
But *what I want to tell you
Is that when you're entirely suspended
Is when you look most beautiful
Because you are entirely you then,
Unconscious of what you want to be.
I contemplate telling you when
You tell me
                      this is your new favourite film
And I'm crushed
Because if we don't have the same favourite films,
We have nothing,
And so I keep silent.

And
         I will never tell you
What I want to tell you
Because you told me then, that your favourite films
Are always the ones you watch
On your favourite days,
And made me decide that the film
Wasn't so bad after all.

I can never bring myself
to tell you goodbye, so I
will carve into small, blue stones
My farewells and Promises,
and leave them behind at forts
and cinemas:

All the places that were ours
Will continue so to be.
Slumbering, undisturbed,
obedient stones will lie
until one of us, through brooding,
goes where so often we used to be;
or, oh forbid, the other
chances on them, with another,
fresh-picked love.

You promise me your Watchlist
on IMDb
Will tell me more about you
Than dessert and another round of coffee
Ever could,
But I know a Shazam history
Will reveal nothing at all,
So I then order
—for I must—
That coffee and dessert
And stay until
They tell us they're shutting down.

My cup creaks of ceramic
And you walk up smelling like cigarettes
While I'm smelling of coffee
That someone else spilled on me
And that's all I can think of-
Of how well we go together;
And how I want to go with you to
Your next haircut
So I can scoop up
All the fallen flecks
To remember by them the days
When They'd curl into your eyes
And you'd lift toned arms to brush them back

You are so different
From what Desnos and I imagined
But you're better still
Than that that You could be,
For you exist
                       -in my reality.
Each cup of coffee
Reveals more distinctions
And with each cup
I love you better.

You reach for your fifth sugar cube
To drop into your third cup of liquid gold
That holds more sugar and ice cubes
Than actual tea.
Tumbling cube after cube
-of sugar or ice I've lost track,-
You pause mid-tumble in contemplation
Then start to fidget with one,
Turning it over
In dry palms.
Neither hear the cacophony
Below our bubbled balcony.
My bluewhite, brown-streaked saucer
Is hopeful, and holds your gaze,
Its dripping brownstains braver than I in that.
My every clink-a-clink-a-clink
Of spoon on cupedge
breaks your concentration
And you have to start over
(With what, I'm not certain)
And we both know I'm clinking on purpose,
Counting beats with the cuckoo clock,
With a heart as full of hope
As your cup is with hexagonal once-cubes.
When you look up again,
I can feel inside me
The number of universes in the world
Double instantly,
     and I wonder
          Which one we're in--
Will you say what you want
Or what (you think) you should?

I bleed outside the lines
from the insides of my knees.
The thousand-at-once ******
of your mild affection
that paint my sore, chafed skin
take my breath away- Like
you've never done before.
Your hurt hurts me more Than
your loving ever could.
You're the corner of the table
that I keep bruising my thighs on,
but it's a round table conference
&nd; they're telling me that love
is just around the corner.
I have to climb over the corner
of bruising, vicious love!
But my table is round;
how do I get over you?