Tangent: touching
along a curve,
a surface,
without intersecting.

We are acquainted.
Contours quietly agree.
What I cannot guess
with my hands
I will consider
with my lips—

count the places 
I kiss you,
forget where I am,
start over.

Still night;
eyes keen,
sheets unfurled—
sails.

The night, sometimes,
swims with sad fish.

The night, sometimes,
is a ritual drowning.

Lonely, I consider waking you
to say

*Look—
the stars are bioluminescent, baby.

You have a flying machine.
I have the afternoon off.
Let's meet where we used to,

huddled under mossy eaves,
fumbling with rented keys;

you can call me Gypsy Rose 
and I can call you Captain.

Should it matter what we call it?
What sound our mouths make?
That's just typology, interpretation;
my love for words doesn't mean
I find them adequate.
Do we have to call it anything?

Can't I just say
*I will love you tonight, 
like that girl you write poems for,
only better ?

We draw hearts to say 
     I am in love with you

when love disappoints, we say
     I am heartsick

when we fall deeply, we say
     My heart did a slow somersault

when we know that the heart 
is a drum, a pendulum, a clock.
On good days, it is a sundial

but it is always
just a timekeeper, the 
tick 
tick 
tick
of minutes and seasons,
but never
forevers.

so I thought I might tell you
that my left currently bears
a disappearing crescent of ouch
and three diamonds

or that my right
tends to drift
to the back of my neck
when I'm trying to remember

or that they both stop and start
over these letters
right now,

not sure what to say.

Love defies all laws of perspective;
the farther away               it is
the larger it appears.

Nothing else is like that.

So you are not fooled
by pretty perfumed bombs
that explode in clouds of kisses
and whispers of yes,

not outfoxed
by foxiness,
sleight of hand
and hips

not suckered
by my puckered
lips

and yet
you gladly fall
for all my tricks.