The hum of the nightlife
lulls me to sleep
and I wrap my arms
around the cool pillow—
instead of your chest.
Broadway lights twinkle
above my head,
but no one
forms them into constellations with me.
The coffee is great, and
the streets stay exciting,
but there's nobody's hand
to hold as I'm walking.
Manhattan is incredible
and here I am happy,
                                      but the only thing
                                     this city still needs
                                                          i­s you.

One day we're going to be a "real couple." I'll invite you over, and you won't have to park around the corner. Maybe it'll even be when my parents are home. Maybe I won't need to sneak out. For now, you pull into the driveway of the church on the next street—but I don't mind the walk.

One day we'll be able to go on our First Official Date. We can go to that restaurant you like downtown, and I'll borrow a dress from my best friend because none of mine will look right. I think I'll love the city even more when I'm walking through it with you. For now we're grabbing fast food on stolen time, trying to get back to school before anyone notices we're gone. We get away with it every time.

One day I'll be able to spend the night. You'll wear those neon green sweatpants and I'll laugh at you for them, but you'll probably look good anyway. We'll watch old movies, like the one where Robin Williams and young Matt Damon go see about a girl, or the one where Audrey Hepburn spends her time in jewelry stores and doesn't name her cat. For now I can only come over for enough time to watch a few episodes of a show about a paper-selling company. I like it, though. I've always loved the theme song, and your laugh is still one of the best things I've ever heard.

One day I'll get in your car and we'll spend hours driving around, exploring and seeing where we end up. I won't worry about traffic being slow or getting caught, and you'll play your music as loud as we can take it while we try to find the best places around here to get lost. For now we talk about running away on the way back to my parents' world, and I wish with all my heart that we could one day. You don't let go of my hand the entire car ride.

One day I'll be free to make my own choices, and you'll be the only option that I want. For now I'm sixteen, and you're seventeen, and we're both young and naïve, and we both make wishes at 11:11. My favorite kisses are the ones that taste like your coffee, and you laugh at me for the time last year when I only liked tea. Sometimes I'm not good at hiding how sheltered I've been growing up, but you never seem to care. You make fun of my poetry, but I keep writing it anyway. I make fun of you for being way too into weight lifting, but I agree to try it with you sometime. And there's a lot we don't really know yet—but with everything I am, I love you and I love you and I love you, and that's exactly how I know that one day we'll be able to be anything and everything we want to be.

For now that's all I can say. But "one day" is much less of a daydream and much more of a promise.

I like thinking about
     how city traffic, in a way,
          echoes the ocean.
                    (But it adds its own separate rhythms.)
           Though the swells are both never-ending,
           the energy of both is never constant.
  The city is never the same place twice.
   The same wave cannot crash again.
And never
                have either
                                 gone back.

Once a writer falls in love with you,
you can't ever die—
we all know the saying.
But what happens, I wonder,
to those who fell in love
but never tried to preserve it
with paper and ink?
Was their love, I wonder,
not as real
as the love that all of us
have written down,
as if the feelings aren't official
until we find an artistic way
to express them in words?

So this one goes out to
all the athletes and the inventors,
to the photographers and the painters
and the musicians and the dancers—
to the encouragers, and the listeners,
and the readers—
to everyone who's ever been in love.
To anyone who's ever found themselves
feeling the same way inside as it feels
when you step into the sun
after spending far too long
in artificial lighting,
or when you feel the breeze again
after far too much air conditioning.

This one goes out to all of you.
To all of *us.
Because no matter how we choose
to express it,
we are the lovers,
and we can never die.