You probably understand. Or maybe you don't, after all. Either way, it is jumping around inside me and if I don't let it out soon all my carbonation will fizz up and run over the side of my glass and I don't want to waste all that sweetness.

I want to kiss you underwater.

I want that kiss to be the only thing keeping us alive. Down there we are foreigners, aliens. Grasping, I want to feel your flesh in stark contrast to the smooth wetness all around me, like a secret.

All that life where we cannot live. Exotic, forbidden, so lovely. I am sick with love.

A travelling heart
Won’t settle to soon
A travelling heart expects nothing
It loves as it goes
But keeps a safe distance
Fluidity and movement
Allow safety from settlement
From truth and definiteness

When will the heart be ready?
To remain
To accept another
And be still
When enough has been seen
And enough has been done
Who will settle this travelling heart?

Could I have found the one?
Could you be mine?
Could this work?
Could we be what we were looking for?
I guess we'll find out

In the sun you look golden, tan and glowing
                  My very own bronzed statue.
                  You shine and never give in.

“This isn’t love.
                  You could never be mine, not really at least.
                  You would be a trophy that I never won
                  In a competition I never entered.

This is sacrifice.
                 I would change it all. I would stay.
                 You could be the one for me
                 But I couldn’t for you.

This is martyrdom.”

—“What are you dying for?”
                 Golden boy I would do it all for you.
                 Anything you wanted, except for this
                 Except be second best.

“You”

I carry you with me,
Woven
In between
The frayed
Ends of my oversized
Sweater,
And the
Hollow pauses
Of conversation
Saved for thoughts
Too sacred
To be revealed.
I carry you outside of me,
Like the thin layer
Of frost
That dances lightly
Before collapsing onto the
Ancient windows of
My two door Oldsmobile.
I carry you above me,
Your presence as big as the
Wide open sky,
Yet also as unattainable.
Reaching above,
My fingers stretch out to grasp
You, but instead
Are met with the vacant
Feeling of air
Drifting between my
Clammy palms.
I carry you beneath me,
Supporting my
Staggering steps
As I drag my heavy feet across the
Uneven ground.
I carry you with me.
                                                                                   MB.

It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

I wrote another neat bundle of words
Knotted them with coarse string
Smoothed the slick label over the bow
And licked my lips in guilt.

My heart has never thumped so hollowly in my chest.

Will you forgive me?