‘Let’s do a Sam, Patrick and Charlie,’
(Do I even have to tell you that
I’m always in-yes with you?)
‘What’s our tunnel song?’
Click. Radio music filling the car.
You tell me over the music that
You don’t want a tunnel song
Because
Why have one song when we
Can have a playlist of it?
Our tunnel playlist starts with:
                                                         01. young blood—the naked and the famous: you’ll keep my secrets
                                                        ­                          hope to die/promise and swear it to the sky.
                                                         02. love somebody—maroon 5: and if I fall for you/ I’ll never recover
                                                         03. lego house—ed sheeran: and I’ll surrender up my heart /
                                                                ­                          and swap it for yours
                                                         04. animal—neon trees: what are you waiting for? / take a bite of my
                                                                ­                           heart tonight
                                                         05. yellow—coldplay: do you know? / you know I love you so
                                                         06. i need you now—lady antebellum: and I wonder if I ever cross  
                                                         ­                                  your mind / for me it happens all the time
                                                         07. lightning—the wanted: how many times do I fly through your
                                                                ­                  headspace / now it’s speeding away from a safe place
I don’t even like half of the songs
The radio played but it was
Perplexing how I find a
Line or two of it
To keep track of
My feelings.
‘Do you see it?’* You gesture at the road.
I recalled that bit of Charlie’s letter.
Omitted bits of it and filled it with some
As lightning—the wanted starts to fade
And another song plays,
‘I like this song,’ I tell you
‘I like it, too.’
and if you only die once/
i wanna die with you
‘Let’***** the notes,’
—fingers drumming on the wheel
I finger snap occasionally.
When the song ended, we have
The same answer for the same question:
‘Do you feel infinite?’

We are lost souls.
Finding comfort with the common ground
Of being lost
Would we find our way back?
Would we even find the right way?
Or have we already found it
When our lost souls collided?
Are we still lost
Now that we found each other?
‘You just love that word, don’t you?’
‘What word?’ I ask as I pulled the pen up
From your skin
But my hand lingers
You smile. *‘Lost. You like the idea of lost.’
I also like the idea of you
Sitting thisclose to me as I
Scribble on your skin
But ‘It looks appealing.’ I shrug
‘Not having any idea where you’re heading to is appealing?’
I explain that being lost
Is not always worrying about
Having no sense where you’re going,
It’s also letting go to see
What could be path could be lying
Ahead of you and thinking
Whether you’ll go or stay or
Look for another way
‘Like the road not taken?’
‘Or somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond.’
You grabbed the pen from me
And held my hand in place
My heart tries its best not to burst.
It’s not our souls that are lost
But our fragments, it scattered
Throughout places and our souls—
Our souls are bound to find it
So if my missing piece
Falls in you and yours in me,
We are bound to collide,
Bound to see and realize that we
Are not as lost as we ought to be.
Oh but I am still lost, I thought,
Lost in you.

‘Milkshakes remind of that movie.’
I took a sip of chocolate milk
And nodded
‘The street poet part?’
‘Sweet cakes and milkshakes,
I’m a delusion angel’
‘I’m a fantasy parade,
I want you to know what I think,’
‘Don’t want you to guess anymore’
I swallowed.
I don’t think that I’m ready to tell you
So I stall. ‘Swap?’
Tall milkshakes glasses slide over the table,
Across from each other, straws plunging in
I took a sip of vanilla and you took more
Than a gulp of chocolate
And I wanted to think that
You might like chocolate more
Than I like vanilla
But then maybe not.
Because what I feel feels
Much more larger than you
But just the thought of
You liking me too
Has probably woke every single sleeping neuron
In me.
The waiter sighs, thick-crust pepperoni slides over
You offer him a slice,
I offer him an apologizing smile
He shrugs, taking both.
And we take our first bite
Simultaneously
Pepperoni, mushrooms, bell pepper, cheese, sauce
Hitting our taste buds at the same time
And we chew in content together.
I would never want to miss
A single detail tonight
And I wouldn’t want even this
Tiny feeling exploding in me
Right now to be forgotten
‘I think this pizza deserves a poem.’
‘I’ll grab those napkins and ask for a pen.’*
And we wrote our undying love
as one.

‘Can I launch the 20 Qs now?’
You laugh and you tell me that you love it
That I make you laugh and you add ‘Yes. Fire away.’
I wanted to keep you laughing,
To keep you happy
Now that I discovered a bit of Why me?
‘Are you on ****?’
You laughed. Harder, this time.
And I noticed that it’s because I love
Seeing you laugh—that head thrown back,
Loud laughter spilling from your mouth—
That it’s enough for me to want to
Keep you happy.
‘Maybe,’ you grin.
I stiffen, indignant. ‘You could get us killed, lunatic!’
(But then, if you do,
At least I’ll die with you)
‘Well, I wouldn’t blame that on the ****, love.
I’ll blame your PJs for that, so distracting.’
Playful slaps on the arm,
Half-feeling sorry for myself and my
Finn and Jake pyjamas
Playful pouts and rubs on the arm.
‘So where are we going?’
You tell me that you haven’t figured that out yet
And that if I had something in mind, you’d be open
‘My mind is wandering off to the land of milkshakes.’
‘My mind would love to wander off to the land of milkshakes with your mind.’
I laugh and tell you that that reminds me of Cummings
And together, we chorus
‘I like my body when it is with your body.’
Until we reached the diner with a CLOSED sign hanging
‘Should we grab a crow bar and break in?’
Your laugh vibrated through the cold, silent air
Before grabbing my wrist and pulling me back to the car.
(I had suppressed the thought:
Please don’t let go ever.
To the dark depths of my mind)
‘How about 24-hour pizza?’
‘Had me at pizza.’ I grin.
‘I know.’
And I know, too.
I fell for you.

Phone beeping, scrambling hand
Click. Says 'Hello?'
'Hey, it's me.'
Head meeting the bed dashboard ‘Ow—‘
You ask if I'm okay. I winced, No
But quickly amended, 'What's up?'
You laugh and you tell me that you're
Standing in the cold, outside my house.
I panic.
‘Yeah. I don’t know why. Can you possibly come out?’
I wanted to tell you that you had me at Hey
But I wouldn’t want to scare you away and so,
‘I’ll be down in a second,’ I scramble out of bed,
Out of the room, down the stairs—as fast as I can to
Fulfil the second I promised.
(Also, because I wanted to see your face at once)
The doors creaks open; I step out into the cold
‘Hi.’
I breathed.
‘Hey.’
You breathed.
The obvious question unasked was asked.
At 2 am in the morning, you tell me:
‘Let’s drive.’
What, Why, Where, When, How—?
You must’ve sensed the 20 Qs about to spill
From my wild, raging mind because
‘Come on. Hop in. No questions.’
But
‘I want a late night, okay, morning adventure.
We’ll be back at six, I promise.’
‘Why?’
More like, Why me?
Because I just want to know, really.
The question was thrown over the bridge
As you opened the door of the car
For me
I told you that this better be good
But then I know that it would be
Because I’m going to be
With you.
Car door closing, engine starting.
Our late night adventure beginning.

this time,
I have one goal in mind:
to see the sunrise.
I have waited, waited, waited
for hours in the dark
and I just wanted
to see the sun
rise out from it
slowly,
within transitions of
vanilla dawn--
a swirly mass of blues, whites,
purples, pinks, oranges and yellows.
my test of faith came
at four a.m
that clever hour of
coolness, tricking the body
to curl up and
sleep.
but thank God
I resisted
(although I admit, I closed my
eyes for a minute)!
so the yellows and oranges
slowly burst through
the mass of lonely
black and blue
and I'm overwhelmed by the
questions of day from
'when do the lamp post lights
turn off?'
to
'am I as ready as I prepared myself to?'
then I figured that
sunrises are as
lonely as
sunsets because
the world does not change
overnight.
but it was still changing (or maybe
it just feels like it)
to see the sunrise,
to catch the faux hope
that comes with its light.

If I would have
to write your name
a thousand times,
I would.

My hands would
tire and cramp---
but it would be
a pleasant cramp. A
pleasant
tiresomeness.

For your name is pleasant
and it would be
too much
of a
pleasure
to write it
a thousand times.