A love, faintly remembered, is rekindled below my weary spirit. Your acute absence has made this cliché stronger. My forbidding heart warms in the moment I smell the flame. I lose all restraint against your mysterious effect as passion overrides my shivering fear. I pull you to me desperately with a newfound innocence. I open myself over the flame with a surety never before known. You kneel intimately at my feet, removing the last of me with such a patient gentleness. My heart truly breaks at the sight of your exposed vulnerability. You light up my fair skin with your poetic hands. Tenderness, how I had forgotten your true beauty. Breathing my name into my naked shoulder, you make love to me. In response, I raise my ready body to meet yours, realizing I am lost. I cling to you, shaking, as our passion consumes all that is comprehensible. In the fading darkness, tears spill from my eyes as you stroke my neck into a false affection. I ache to have you as my own, lying with no other. The desire dies in my heaving chest as I escape this beauty once more.

i have
many flaws
this i
have always
known i
snap my
gum i
eat too
much my
accent is
far too
heavy for
this midwestern
town and
i stand
too close
to the
street while
waiting for
the light
to change

today i
waited in
the bus
lane and
didn't realize
until the
girl beside
me screamed
as the
bus sped
past inches
from my
face i

guess i
forgot that
not everyone
wants to
cease existing
so badly
they subconsciously
hope for
a bus
to flatten
them on
their commute