dear boy
this is a love poem to the evening we met-
not to you
because love is a four-letter word that I cannot use against you yet
I was texting while biking
perpetually late
you were sitting outside the cafe
couldn’t find the door (somehow perfectly understandable)

I was thinking of how I would open up the conversation, carefully wrapped in the plastic seal of Tinder ambiguity.  We could be one of many things:
two strangers meeting
two serial killers
one serial killer, one victim
two humans
two aliens

We learned we both fell under the last title—  both aliens to Rhode Island
and Maine, our homeland

dear boy, this is a poem to myself, so I will not forget you,
you were such a gift that night, with eyes that were both kind and silly,
and I was so drawn to you as I drew you, wanted to capture the seconds of the night and how they etched themselves into our skin, every line of our bodies grows darker with age
sometimes I think about how wrinkles are just lines that grow onto our bodies like a sort of topography, and we perceive this as ugly

topography is ****, the way it undulates and defines a thing, such as a hill, rising and falling

the lines spreading out like frozen sonar

we didn’t have to go to the diner, but we did,
didn’t even eat anything, just each other’s time
and I wanted to stay there, and I wasn’t sure which I was more drawn to: the thought of us remaining