Let me show you
All the words I cannot find.
Let me write them
On your neck in faded lipstick stains.
Close your eyes.
Listen to my shaking hands.
They have a code of their own,
One that only you can understand.
Listen to them rattle against your chest.
Feel the heat of my breath
Glide over your cheek.
Listen to what it’s telling you.
Feel my teeth tug at your bottom lip.
Let me get as close to you as I can
Without losing myself completely.
I can’t say this aloud.
Just listen to my body,
Decipher the language it speaks, wordlessly.
Somewhere in this mess,
The purest love I could ever muster.
A diamond
In all of our rough.

It’s difficult to stomach at first,
But once you start,
There’s no sense in stopping.
Eventually you’ll start every morning
With a cup of coffee,
And no matter what happens,
You’ll always remember just how I like it.

A few thousand miles
Is nothing at all
When you know I’m there,
Waiting.

You know that I will always
Answer the phone,
So I anticipate the vibration against my lap
Every time you’re drunk
And spilling out those rhotic words
And it takes me a moment to understand
Everything you say
So I fill the silences with quiet giggles
And you ask me why I’m laughing.

I’m laughing at you.
And I can see the goofy look on your face
Despite the rolling of the Atlantic
And the static it creates.
I blush just as much as I would
With your body next to mine.
I can hear you laughing, too.

Six months,
Just six months.
I hear your heart drop,
Heavy with an unknown sense of longing
For something you’ve never truly felt.
I wish it was sooner,
You say.
I wish it was now.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins
Of the history of time
In this universe:
Us.

Your unsteady hand pouring milk.
My unsteady hand on your thigh.
Breath quivers
But it is full and deep.

Someday
Someone
Will write about this night.

A heart doesn't realise how much is missing
Until something makes it whole again.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins of the history of time
In this universe
And all others:
Love,
Whatever that may mean.

The world is crumbling around me,
And you want to turn it into poetry.

You won't pick up the phone
Because you don't want to hear my voice.
Baby, my voice is all that's left.
It's the only hope I have,
The only way to make it out alive.
So clueless behind a keyboard, so far away.
If you could see how somber this city is,
How loveless, how grey,
Maybe you'd pick up the phone.

If everything collapses,
I'm going down with it.
God knows you won't lend a hand.

I walk this path alone,
Like I always have,
Only this time
It ends at the lake
And I keep walking.
Maybe I'll find you down there
Among the shipwrecks:
My own Benedict Arnold.

Please pick up the phone.

A loose arm draped across my abdomen,
Clutching me like I am a childhood teddy bear,
With one eye missing
Because you loved me too much.
In the morning,
Sleepy shuffling of slippers
To hot coffee between palms.
Shared kisses to sweeten the deal,
Tasting of hazelnut and cinnamon,
We are untouchable.
Out in the cold,
Your hand in my ever-freezing hand,
The wind turning our cheeks the most lovely shade of pink
And we’re so quiet
That not even the trees can hear us.
Soft, slow kiss on the lips before I go
And I will think of you all day,
Until I am in your arms again.
The cycle repeats,
And the coffee never runs out.

He asked me why.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that had
An explanation, or needed one.
Still, he asked why.
It was intrinsic.
I had never thought it through before.

It has something that home doesn’t.
He asked what.
It has you. That’s important.
He asked why it mattered, why he mattered.
Everyone else is gone and you’re here with me.

He asked why it meant so much.
Home has no culture of its own.
We are a melting ***.
Our history has us playing a part.
Our countries share a common villain.
The difference is, we became ours.
You didn’t.

He asked why here, why now.
You view this place like I view my own.
You’ll never see it the way I do.
There is no conversation in bars,
Just fingers and tongues and fake names.

You look at me when I speak.

He asked if that was all.
No, of course not.

Those uilleann pipes make me cry.
I have no nation,
No reason for pride.
My songs and stories
Do not hold the same depth.
You tell me who you are
And it means something.

He touched my arm and the universe swallowed me whole.

Do you want to go home? he asked.
Absolutely not.
Do you want to leave? he asked.
*With you, absolutely.

Please forgive me, for my hands won’t stop shaking.
You and I:
Parallel lines holding on to the notion that maybe one day
We’ll intersect, in more ways than one.
My breath catches at the thought of your fingertips
Slipping and sloping down my spine.
I can’t fall asleep anymore without you on my mind,
Conjuring images of your
Phantom arms wrapped around my waist
And the autumn breeze of an open window washing over me.
They say that this cannot be love,
But god, I’m not so sure.

Your mother doesn’t know that I exist.
I thank her every morning for you,
Over my lukewarm cup of cheap coffee.
She is the only person who will ever love you more than I.
You look at me like I am made of flowers
Whose petals have colours you’ve never been able to comprehend.
I hope they make a little more sense now.

The first wrinkles on my face will be crow’s feet,
Like my mother’s,
Like my grandmother’s.
We’ve all fallen a little too hard
And smiled a little too much.
I’ll cherish them just the same.

They never taught us how to write poems without the fuel of heartache.
I’ll never learn, anyhow.