Yes you can
Find it in your heart
Promote the positive
Right from the very start
Be about your business
Guide your way to history
Have a strong will
Reach for the victory

stain her lips with your kisses,
but do not paint her face with your anger.
rage does not fit in romance,
too many letters have gone missing,
and too many souls gone silent.
let her skin be canvas untouched,
caressed out of love for the unknown,
stroked with a soft touch.
forget what callused the tips of your bristles -
there will always be another sunset to capture tomorrow,
and an artist is nothing without good supplies and good ideas.
but she is not a paintbrush,
a tool you get to control -
make her your muse instead of a tattered sketchbook page.
take her weeping from the background of a dark forest,
to the foreground of the sun rising on a soft-sanded new tomorrow -
take her into your arms,
mold her sweetly, gently into your heart,
and allow the clay to harden and heal any cracks still exposed.
a woman is a work of art on her own,
ready to be appreciated -
there is no need to change her beauty,
only a craving to be a part of it.

In state of perpetual discomfort
An object in motion tends to stay in motion
And a woman in pain tends to stay in pain
Longing for things she knows not
Desperation of unknown origin
Technicolor daydreams, rendered euphoria
Take me to the field of wildflowers
Dipped in the last glorious light of evening
Because this house isn't a home tonight
Void, endless sky, drawing me in
Like a long lost friend who only wants to help
The hands that created the stars
Have a hold on my heart tonight

When you meet him down the hall
After three months of being 1000 miles away
There will be no candlelit dinner,
No couch bought after searching for hours on a Saturday afternoon
Meant only to spend Sunday evenings on it snuggling.

You will not have a first dance,
A first child together,
A first anything.
He will not call you “his girl,”
Or tell you that he loves you.

You will not tell him that you love him either
Because you know it’s crazy to tell
A married man you’re hopelessly in love with him and everything about him -
To expect
Him to drop his wife and everything he is doing,
To drop to his knees and propose to you with a plastic ring
Because he knows you’re cheap and he hates jewelry.
It’s crazy to think that he will hold your face in his soft palms
And allow his lips to press against yours,
To mimic all the passion in your heartbeats that call his name.

He will not touch more than your shoulder.
It will mean nothing.
He will smile at you,
Not because you are you,
But because you might have said something funny -
People smile over more than love and coffee
And you’ll never spend lunch with him in a downtown café, anyways.

It won’t be because you prefer strawberry tea,
It will be because he prefers another woman’s presence over any gift you could’ve given him.
You will be kind to the woman he chose instead,
Because, like her husband, she is clueless
To the thoughts that keep you up at night,
Talking to your pillowcase about blue orchids and a gold band he will probably lose.

He will never know that he is the ex
That solves the equation
Of your happily ever after.

A young woman stands on the corner of the street.
She leans slightly to the left,
and wholly places her body against the brick wall.
An unlit cigarette is caressed beneath her gloved hands.
Snow falls and brushes itself against her black boots
as if it were a cat asking to be scratched behind the ear.
Her warm breath conceives a chilled cloud of smoke with the frigid air.
A man walks from behind her right shoulder.
He holds a collection of daisies and moves slowly.
His oxfords progress as if they are reaching a bus stop.
His black coat reaches his knees and matches the young woman's -
it fits tighter on her.
He places a hand in his pocket,
removes a sterling silver lighter,
and places it in the palm of her hand.
He rests his freezing fingers inside her embrace -
the leather feels like his armchair at home -
his only escape from anything other than solitude.
The young woman smiles,
lights her cigarette,
and allows the nicotine to coat the inside of her body.
A red lipstick shaded deeper by violets
stains itself on the cigarette.
The man holds his hand open and aloof.
The young woman dances her thin fingers around his stout ones.
The cigarette finds its new home.
The young woman smiles.
The man walks away,
carrying her bouquet.

What we miss most is the
What could've beens.
We miss the late nights,
The vacations,
The soft touches -
We miss the bended knees and diamonds,
The names of children whose histories have yet to be written
We miss the histories we wanted to write but never found the right notebooks to scribble in -
We miss the bouquets,
The stolen glances.
The glasses of wine,
The memories that are somewhere between fog on the Golden Gate Bridge
And daydreams in Central Park.
We miss what was,
But more than anything,
We miss the happily ever after
that never began.