maybe you were right: i never brought home flowers or chocolate cleverly arranged in the shape of a heart and i couldn't afford a day at the spa but i'd always sit with my bare *** on the cold bathroom tile for hours and feed you toasted bits of cheese on ritz crackers while you cried in the bathtub i'd braid your hair as you let your fingers wrinkle until the water cooled off too much your ******* got hard and bubbles stuck to the cut of your shoulders
because you were there when my mom's little car died on a backroad under the old black tree that scratched up the sky you pulled your pants up over ruby knees and asked me to fix your bra smoked a cigarette lying upside down across my damp chest facing my feet and made me make a promise while i traced music notes into the soft flesh of your back with my ***** fingernails and found the cracks in your porcelain ankles with my tongue
you said my love for you is something that will never make sense and you never know what to do with your hands when i'm kissing you but you moaned the chorus while i sang verses into your bellybutton and tied a couple fingers to the soft web of hair behind your ears we were like two locusts fighting in a gossamer heap
two weeks later you were dancing in my kitchen like a daffodil drunk on robotussin wearing only striped peppermint legwarmers and authentic dreamcatcher earrings so i bought a theremin from your favorite pawn shop and taught you how to tickle it and as the wind picked up whipped your hair into a crucial comet's tail and rustled the caterpillar from the windowpane back to it's home in the wormy grass i could hear the warm whistle it made when you played with it alone in the bedroom
i am crying now while driving down highway one recalling how your nose crinkled when you smoked crushed roaches or the way your hair tasted in the morning and how you used to spit a little bit when you laughed and i can still hear that haunted echo even as the saltwater swells and splashes past the rocks
that sun machine is just a distant memory now but it left burn marks on my skin and the floor where we tumbled and fought the first time i called you beautiful