my heart missed the lesson on holding back
so
i swallowed my pride and got
indigestion

i'll tell you in the smallest ways until the right way
comes to me,
i'll leave you notes in obscure places and kiss your feet

you are the butterfly branched from the moth,,,



and you are worth the wait.

i am a toddler
sitting alone in the morning
being drenched by the dew
and crying

i am cutting my teeth
on a stick i found
in the ***** woods
of this southern town
and picking scabs off
of my sister's knees

i only exist to make a mess
to **** everything up
and then shrug it off

i am a blue balloon tied
around the wrist of a baby
crying

I should have known better...

I should have known better than to think you would be the same girl i fell in love with so long ago...
Some of the most basic texts for an an intro biology class could have told me that each and every one of
the cells that make up the human body die and regenerate...

Most of which do so in less than a year...

So why am i so surprised to find that all that was you died in the years since we last spoke...

Even still you stand and speak with her voice...

You even remember me...

But you are nothing more than a clone of that woman i loved back then...

So here i am a man that firmly believes in the laws and rules that govern the world we live in attacked and brought to his knees by that one little speck of an idealist that lived somewhere in my soul at some point...

All because foolishly i believed that biology was a secondary force when put up against the intangible

things that make this cold and lonely life worth living...

I thought our love could survive...

This time it took for both of us to become entirely different people was too much for out love to bear...

You are not her...

Even if you have her face...even if you have that smile...

Even if you have those eyes that pierce the soul that i didn't even know existed until you showed it to me...

And what's worse is that now you show me that in no way am i the same person i once was either...

your beauty is not
hollow

starlit and soft,
kiss me clear as your half Brazilian eyes
clear as laughter that fills me:
i am your cup
press your lips to my edges and
drink.

liquid turns solid turns gas
the properties are the same,
as is love
changing but not changed.

if heaven is not liberation,
heaven is our cheeks brushing just as they should.

I grab words from you

They are precious to me

I want to keep them folded

Safe in my pocket.

*But
I hang on to the end of your sentences
Like a starved man holds a crust of bread

I know that you are too beautiful for me to hold
Too precious and rare to belong to me
I am the humble farm boy
You the long haired princess

...the boy who hides in the garden
Just to hear you sing

I don't deserve you
Long legged  and delicate

(Keeping a butterfly in a jar
With a single stick to rest on
The hardest thing for the scientist to do
Is unscrew the cap
And let her float away)

Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.