Say anything but the words in your head.
Smile when he does.
Don’t take the flash in his eyes too personally,
(everything he finds beautiful warrants the cosmos from their depth)
Blush and be flattered.
Watch his lips, but don’t read them.
(The literature you find there will always be the stuff of fantasy)

He’ll laugh, low and warm,
and under it, you will flicker like candlelight,
but a wick only lasts so long.

If you fall,
you’ll fall from great heights.
His nimble fingers won’t  make that
kind of catch.

When is it over?
When your name isn’t synonymous with “beautiful”,  
wanting to say “…the rise and fall of my heart when I hear , see,  taste, touch, smell"
encompassing the "you",
what you do too.

Sprained look,  your eyes...
Bound & sliced by silence.

and this will...fade.  
The salted end,
It’s presence
hovers. Burning..
wills itself bittersweet.

I know the strength of my own voice,
It cracks frequently, words have weight,
and are weapons if thrown at the right angle,
so I stay left.

Anything I’ve ever tried to let go of has claw marks.
Anything I hold grows roots around my bones,
keeping me together since I learned to live split.
Come here,
I want to kiss all your scratches.

I know getting this far
was a tightrope walk over a chasm.
That you break apart
and ignore your whole image
but I look at you,
and see all the ways a soul can illuminate,
yours lights lanterns in all my dark places,
You burn.

I know
there will always be more questions
than answers in my mouth,
but if you are sure of nothing else,
whether it is days you
out blaze the sun
or nights you shatter yourself
into pieces for later collection,


I will love you when gathered and still.  
I will love you when you are a storm.

I don’t know any other way.

I once read, and I’m paraphrasing,  
that "there are two kinds of lovers…those you write poems for,
and those you don’t"

I have built every word on your kind of compassion,
inked of this heart in my hands.
I know I’m careless with it sometimes,
take for granted it’s resilience.
Often dropping, then coming to cradle it's pulse may be
my only notion of grace,
that you believe in my clumsy grasp.

I know,
loving me is not easy.
Even now, I run in circles around and from your patience,
trying to find or keep or cleanse the 'me' in 'us',
but the distance to home is always wherever I stand
to your arms.

By nature, I’m homesick often.
Your love is a house I want to grow old in.
I promise to take my coat off.
Just leave the heat on high.

He loved her, of course.
But more important than that,
better than that,
He chose her.
Day after day.
Love is easy.  
Choice: that was the thing.

And, one of the hardest things you can learn,
is to leave what wants to be left,
when it is not your choice to go.
Love.
The feeling is what you own, not the person you've attached it to

How the heart can beat so, so strong but never in a straight line.
That a promise is not a contract but breaking either has consequence.
That ‘consequence‘ sounds negative and rarely is.
How time heals…and that healing itself is change, you are not the same person carrying a scar with a story.
Giving up and letting go are two sides of the same coin that you clench in your fist, or carry in your pocket.  
That, if there is strength in numbers, it’s never as much as a single soul with intense purpose.
To grow in a love that lifts itself and still keeps you steady,
not one that makes you want to apologize for the fall.
What it takes to understand a person that cares enough about you
to hide how little they care about you.
How to compromise with anyone but yourself
because common ground is shared,
but you are always wherever you stand.
That indifferent is the worst thing to be,
because anything real has an end point,
and nothing, can go on forever.
How to get out of your head enough to
remember you have a body.
To speak truth, despite.
That OK
is where everyone usually ends up,
even if we **** up entirely along the way.

Don’t ask me about our conversations,

How he turns my tongue into a loom that weaves innuendo,

every other word a variation of invitation.

"Hello" purrs like "come here,"

"good morning" yearns to be "night."

The constant struggle of spaces-

to find,

to fill,

to close.

Don’t ask me about his mouth,

It’s rhythm that makes a stutter of my pulse.

His lips, how they ruby and part, taut like a drum

over his crooked smile,

how I want them to make music of me.

Don’t ask about my fingers afflicted by wanderlust,

how he feels like a long, open road, the lines of him begging

exploration, to trace the places remembered…

discover what’s yet to be found.

Don’t ask me about his hands.

How they are beautiful and skilled in ignition.

About my tinder skin or the fire of his gaze…

how I burn under the lidded, blue flames.

Don’t ask me about my hunger,

the way my stomach drops when he comes to me, jaw tensed, sweet

skinned and swollen,

how it’s yet to be appeased.

How I shape my lips to say “yes,”

how it always feels like “please”