I want to describe you with the most brilliant poetry.
I want to tell with beautiful words how you have a slight smirk when you smile, one side of your mouth raising higher than the other.
I want to compare your eyes to the ocean or the sky, so blue I can't look away.
I want to describe your hands, so exotically carved that I can see your bones as your fingers dance across the piano.
I want you to be astonished at how I can beautifully string together the most amazing words in my vocabulary just to try and describe how you make me feel.
I want to be a poet for you.

If we stop learning moon names at Callisto
and Ganymede, where are the other sixty-three
whoop, there goes gravity
If Themisto stubbed his toe, how could we
teach everyone else to cringe?
We are growing,
Elara, we are learning how to reach
higher with the hands we’ve got,
how to be tiny dots full of not-quite fire
in a world so much bigger than desire.
The best advice you gave me,
Elara, was when you silently tied back
your hair and rolled up your sleeves,
cleared your throat and decided
It’s not the fire after all, it’s the light.
And I might have burned out by now
if you hadn’t just rolled up your sleeves
like that, not flaming or fuming or
running or burning but steady,
ready for the rest of forever.
You are fire and water at once,
Elara. You take my hand and we walk
calmly upward, one step
for me and one for you makes two
for womankind.
Stepping over the black hole
of expectations and into the revelations
of well-lit night. You and me,
Elara, now we’re ready.

3.36 found my eyes open
Alone in a bed, a drought amidst
Cracking thunder and abusive rain.
My farflung thoughts dodged droplets
As they struggled to reach you.
You were dancing with Jupiter,
Quickstepping through asteroids and waltzing over elden craters
Creasing the face of our peaceful watcher of the night.
As you passed by, I
Reached for you, attempting to defy the tethers at my feet.
I glanced down at them--realized they looked like hands;
Hands I knew held me from you as if
You were some toxic drug and they were doing so
"For your own good," like they would know
What good you could do for me.
Can they not feel my desert heart
Nor see rain forest eyes?

You were scheduled to return yesterday,
Then today, then hope slipped from my scope
Pointed to the stars, searching for your
Blazing trail of fire. The sky is dark.
Still I say my prayers
That, in your brilliance and splendor returning,
The pyre consumes you not.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.