“i don’t understand you, esi. you claim to be unaffected by trifles of love, but i see the way you look at a sunrise. how can you love one dearly yet abandon its twin entirely? romance is the sister of the sun.”

“what good does it do me to believe in something i can never achieve? i know myself and the intricacies of my inner being. i am not the sort of girl who falls in love.”

“why are you so afraid?”

one hundred fleeting thoughts run through my head and i can’t seem to hold onto any of them because none of them compare to how much i want to kiss him in this moment.

“i am tired of dreaming about you,” i try desperately to sound indifferent, but my eyes are watering and he knows he knows he knows--

he smirks, closing the gap between us with only a step. “i am the only thing you will ever dream about,” he murmurs.

you keep asking me why i'm trying so hard this time and i don't know what to say because there's not a beautiful way to tell you that i'm scared to death of my own nature, scared of my innate inconstancy but even more afraid of the intimacy i crave. living on a pedestal isn't as fun as it used to be and now even the sky feels like another corner.

turns out i'd rather be in a corner with you.

i think our souls will wrap around each other forever.
every moment we spend together feels like
dangling on a precipice and
coming home.
i think our souls will wrap around each other forever.

she begins speaking and the words flow smoothly. the language is seductively soft, like a snake's hiss before it sinks in its teeth. the fear in their eyes is justified but i am too familiar with death to fear it. death is an old master.

she’s new.

i think perhaps one day
i will write poetry
the way happy people do.

no inconstancies, the little blips
and commas in places they shouldn't be,
just so.

does this bring hope?
is joy found in predictability?
is contentment in life a reality?

just so. flowers in rows,
the old woman bending over
plucking weeds between her toes.

a period at the end of every
line i wrote. not literally, for lines
and sentence rhymes do not always coincide.

i must break off my thoughts mid-stride
to conform to this three-lined rhyme
forced melody is no poem to me.

yet see how this flows so innocently.
like the little ribboned pigtails of a girl
who has never seen anything bad on t.v.

she isn't me, but neither is this,
coincidentally. but how coincidental
can we be? another few commas and this is over.

not to me. fitting periods where commas
were meant to be is the only skill that comes
naturally.

that, and ****** poetry.
happy people pen happier words that
fit together intuitively. not me.