I don't need clever analogies to love you,
and if you say you love me to the moon and back
I may just go there,
because the idea of loving someone
is already painfully cliched.
But
have you ever considered
how beautiful everything is if you take poetic license?
I amp up the significance,
romanticize every move and symbol I find.
Note
how you gave me a locket
and the clock inside stopped on the day
I realized that I wanted to stay with you forever,
because no amount of time could be enough
so why bother keeping track?
See
how we had the same friends but didn't truly meet
until I was whole enough to let you care for me.
And I think
about there being something wondrous
in the way you know the sun rises for you each day
as you look at it in awe
and I want to write you a sunset
and be your sunrise
because I hope that my eyes shine as brightly as yours
just once.
Remember
when we were on the beach climbing rocks
that no one else recognized as special
and the sunlight
in our eyes, our hair and our hearts
kept us warm in the sea spray?
I think of thunderstorms with you,
looking into your eyes
and seeing rich dark skies
pierced by electric wonder.
And how when we sit in darkness
white, fervent light shines in those eyes
and the contrasting darkness
makes it implausibly more immaculate,
and I see your innocence.
Remember
that first night on the rooftop
where the moon emptied into our souls
and my body shivered
because I knew what was coming.

But then,
there's this other side,
this poet's curse
where I can't help but brood and metaphor our lives.
See the flowers,
a symbol of your affection,
wilting and withering as they die,
leaving an empty vase and crumbling petals.
And they are new love growing old
and I ask
am I brittle,
worn from dried affection?
And should I, do I,
feel like those bouquets?
You see,
I feel something morbid about love,
and something wildly romantic about ******,
and in death is a beauty so complete
that I think on how
my toes are half turned up
when they curl at your kiss
and how
you're running me in circles
as we circle the drain
and no matter what I'll hold my breath for you,
even as I imagine my beleaguered last.
But which one of us will die first?
These paradoxes spin spirits round
like twinkling tops wobbling to a halt
as I question what I'm sure of
because of imagined signs
and morbid thoughts.
I can't see a thing of beauty
without wondering what its faults are.
The facets of 'us' shine out at me as a plethora of stars
and it's killing me to dissect them
and find each supernovaing core.
But it's better to be killed by a lover.
To finally combine the morbidity of love
and the romance of ******.
The beauty of death can take me
after this metaphor ends
and I have a use for time.