why is it that you only remember kissing?

or fumbling with plastic buttons in dim hallways, or folding his pants alongside your dresses
or laughing, or heading home to a bed you both could call yours.
why is it that the nights you spend crying in the next room- why does that fade?
you remain always dusty. god, all those days and months seperated by borders and waters you spent rationing these precious packages of recollection, closing your eyes and watching from a distance, as a younger, softer you rested her head on a pair of shoulders that were always there, a pair of shoulders that grew arms to hold you with, and a mouth to kiss you with, and fingers that would trace you and taste you and smudge you. now you know everything about love with nothing to show for it. now the safest place is nowhere near you.

you remember reaching out in the middle of the night, you remember why you quit smoking, you remember how he tasted, how he pulled you closer under the covers on cold sunday mornings. you would make room now when you would never make room before. now that it's too late, now that you are not fine. you remember kissing.

My body feels numb
You make it hard to breathe
I hold my breath so I can listen to your body
I hear it crying out my name
With every gentle motion
The passion in my soul burns higher
The flames glow brighter
Don't quit
Keep feeding the fire

It was 3 PM on a Tuesday
in the summer, just before
my first semester of college.
I went out on a whim and
bought a cheetah print lava
lamp for forty six dollars
at some stand in the mall,
despite you persistently
advising me not to
waste money on
"insignificant ****"

The next day it rained
from 7 AM until 5 PM
and I forced you to lie
in bed with me all day,
with the curtains drawn
& the lights out.
I wanted us to observe
the weird, red
shapes forming
inside my new cheetah
print lava lamp...
Something about it
captivated me.
I never had one as a kid,
And you just sat there
holding my hand for
fifty eight minutes before
I whispered, "did you see
how pretty that one was?"

You laughed gently
and shifted your eyes
toward my dresser,
at which point
I realized
that was the very first time
you looked away from me
since we had laid down
And
with that thought,
the butterflies
woke so chaotically,
I thought I'd never
catch my breath

after five years
when I write her a love poem,
she is always surprised,
her unexpectation
so very pleases me.

after five years
when I write her a love poem,
I am always surprised,
that a new way to say it,
uncovered.

but this I can tell you,
not once
do I ever write
nor will I ever pen
those I love you words.

they are too easy, too cheap,
a dime a dozen,
naked words make me weep,
dress 'em, cloak 'em, try to
Pradip 'em in
mystery, charming humor,
use conjuring spells of
Bala imagery unreal,
Bzynga!

work hard to tell her why,
work hard to guard your originality,
work hard to tell her in ways
that her into me
smiling, crying, punching.

so I write love poems,
every now and then,
special ways recalled,
teasing her about her forgetfulness,
about her teasing me with rhyming
that is less than spectacular,
how my body has
reshaped itself to fit her.

tell her
I love you,
plain,
well that be downright,

pffft.
(an interjection used to express or indicate
a dying or fizzling out)

the key is to tell her
in a fashion original,
personal to us.

that what all these endless
love poems here strive,
but too oft, fail to arrive.
all tricked up, too direct,
passion burnt used up
after but a single read

stroke her cheek
with soft stanzas,
torrential directness,
no subtly,
fizzles.

write for the long haul,
words that five years hence,
words that five hundred years hence,
make her into me
smiling, crying, punching,
like the first time
she read them,
like they did
five years ago.

I can lay
right next to you
and never touch you

I can see you smile
from across the room
without kissing you

I can watch you
leave the room
and resist hugging you goodbye

But sometimes
when I'm next to you
you have to ask me to move away

Because for a few minutes
I let fantasy get confused with reality
and I lean against you during a movie

And it's so warm
your arm and mine, touching
for that minute I'm at peace

But when you ask
of course I make room
Because I don't want you to feel uncomfortable

And if you weren't my friend
I would probably try it
just once, to know what it would be like to kiss you

But ideally,
I'll get over this
and when I am, we'll still be friends

So in the meantime
I try not to think about kissing you
and I only hug you when I have reason to

What I'm saying is
I will do what I can
to keep myself sane and our friendship intact

But just know
that with every look I give
I wish I could give so much more.

i think maybe i only love you because
you're older, because you have large hands
that have held more than mine ever will

(or maybe it is because instead of choosing to
hold the world, you chose to hold me)