**** the way you say nonsense syllables because it makes me weak in the knees.
Your verbalization of a non-vernacular, space-filling, time-stealing thought
makes me melt like Popsicle Boy’s spine when he realized he couldn’t chase the lightning bug anymore.
You’re just two steps shy of blind in more ways than one, and your ribcage is such a terrible pillow.

Um.

What was it he said
while we sat on the bench


Saturn glimpsed down, considering proposal
but Mars reflected in his own vanity, said no preemptively.
Popsicle boy flicked his hair off his forehead and asked the sun why he was so bored.
"22 thousand civilian casualties in Iran and we don’t even give a ****. Thousands of homeless in this city alone. How is that possible?"
He pointed at a lightning bug.
"I can plant as many community gardens as I want, it still doesn’t make a difference!"

The smidge smudge of pastel over my left eyebrow matches the wildflower I picked down by the river which matches the stray spray paint stain on my right shoe and I’m not one for symmetry, so it suits me just fine. Today is for letting go and for mailing things left behind. Today is for coffee and for Peter Pan Wendy Tiger Lily dances. Today is a blueberry day.

red canvas sneakers
crush a bug on the playground
right where the crayon grass meets the chalk pavement
her feet are
tiny
but the bug is even more insignificant
so it’s all relative, i guess.

the side effects of a well-travelled companion
the complications of the ticket in my hand
the warning signs of my transfer station
i am crying in the back seat of your car
**** it
i am through with this medicated contemplated existence
i am coming through the other side
because i decided it is time to stop being sad

His voice is like flowers, his voice is like puddle skipping, hand-holding, his voice is almost like Thursdays and his work is to speak the words of men long dead. But I like his words best, I like his stammerings and stutterings and ums and ohs and the slip of vernacular into something more spectacular than the slip of his tongue into my mouth.

tiny wrists made up of clothespins

sharp hips made up of awkward wingspans

held my smile like a knife made up of coffee stained teeth

walked me home like a dance with the broken sidewalk
kissed my scared hands with a scarred mouth