Today you pushed back your sleeves
Suddenly, violently,
"I did this in London."
Two tattoos still raw,
Still red the way you complain
People's always are when they
Show them off too early.

With a 5 point needle
And a sixteenth ounce of black ink
You'd bled yourself a crutch
And brought my legs out from under me.

"It means a lot that you like it."
You have scarred your body with
My words of love and you dare to blush
Under my consideration. Every time you
Touch those marks I imagine my fingers
On your arms, tracing your art
And arteries until you pull me in
And kiss me, put your fingers on my arms
And say thank you

                           (I love you)

Say anything but, "it means a lot"
Because I've said that you mean
So much to me so many times and
You just brushed it off, I want to
Brush those lightweight lies off your lips
With my lips, with my fingers
On your lips, until I draw the ink from
Under your skin and you understand
It to be the poison that it is
When it reaches my heart and turns sense to
Seconds until our next touch
And I never have to see that tattoo again
And I never have to feel this way again
Maybe then you'll understand

'Q

Your worst days
Are why I can't break up with you
And why I have to.

You said, I want to go where the riots are,
Where my affliction has no name.
That's what you call it, your pacifism:
Your affliction, your disease.
Like a flaw that keeps you from fighting.
But I've seen you argue with
Unclenched fists and
Disappointed eyes and I know
It's not that you can't fight,
It's that you won
A long time ago.

'Q

I knew it wasn't you that passed me
On a bike this morning, but oh,
It looked like you. God,
He looked like you.

And I'm glad he was on a bike,
Somewhat because he wasn't you and
That meant I could let my head
Turn, let myself watch him pass by
With open hunger the way
I could never watch you,
But mostly because on foot I would have
Pulled him close by the coat that
Looked like one you wear and
Whisper in his ear,
"You look like the boy I want to ****,"

And I didn't want to get arrested,
And I didn't want him to take me up
On my offer
(But part of me wanted him to take me

Up on my offer
Because you never would)
Because I didn't know this was
Anything more than hero worship,
I thought this was little love,
Hearts in margins and
Poems in black ink,
I didn't know this was the kind of
Feeling that had people accosting
Delivery boys for wearing dark jackets

And I think I need to give up quick
Before you, me, or the delivery boy
Gets hurt.

'Q

Whenever I think of that
Stupidly good picture you
Took when you had the flu,
I smile that same smile
And put on that song,
And entertain for a second
The idiotic notion
Of being in love.

God, you're such an idiot.
I was fifteen and you had
An English accent.
I was sixteen and you
Were twenty-two.
I was seventeen and wearing
The necklace you gave me every day.
I'm eighteen and I still do.

I had to buy a new notebook
Because the last one was
Three years of your name
Written over and over again
With increasing impatience
And disintegrating vagueness.

I only write about you in black ink.

I only write about you.

I read that women like Spock
Because making someone love
Who says he cannot
Appeals to them.

I read that you usually
Go for guys and that you're
Incapable of feeling love
In the letters you wrote me
In confidence and I
Have to admit-

Those people researching Star Trek
May have been on to something.

To die by your side
Would be terrible, actually.
I write so much
Just for not having you,
I can only imagine what losing you
Would do for my productivity.

'Q