I thought about leaving
My alarm sounding in the morning
Our faces drew lines across the floor
The night before
Making love was hazy
I pulled away in an instant
And replay all the ways
I've been fought with, tortured even
Watching the back of a man
Exit
Renter
And finally exit.

All of those men seemed to come back
Return again for more
As we laid next to one another
I told you what had been on my mind
Watching you process it in that deep dark way you do
Like you are light years away
Reaching for you
You reach back.

You're a beautiful and mysterious creature
Someone that could be around for it all
Maybe not in the same way someday
But our eyes flicker back to one another
Like we can't seem to give it up
Can't seem to give each other up.

You said you wrote two poems
Scolding you in the kitchen
Jam with bread
I hope you always feel connected to me
Even in the moments where we don't feel quite as heard
I hope the connection never dies.

I used to ask myself where have you been all this time
The times where I fluttered around this city
With a platinum blonde mane
Drank and did drugs a lot
Like I had nothing and everything to lose
Or I'll think about the me I was in Philadelphia
How sporty and cool I was right after graduation
I think maybe you would have liked her the most.

I fantasize about you caring for everyone but me
Even the older versions of myself seem better
And that's probably the point of my achilles heel.

I woke up and held you for what felt like a long time
Before I left for Los Angeles
I had words I couldn't quite seem to find
As you slumbered and turned away
My hands started to write you notes
Like I used to do
But I didn't
I wasn't sure it would matter
So I went and left
And thought about never coming back.

Kissing you in the morning
Looking into your eyes
Do you feel it too?
Like when we connect everything around us becomes
Hazy, blurry, insignificant?
And I know you well enough to know
None of that is coated in badness
To momentarily forget ourselves, for a time
No, if anything it's the most heightened feeling
Humanity looks for
I think and believe.

It reminds me of sitting in classrooms
Of delivering speeches
All of the grass stones I'd leap upon
As a child in the Alabama sunshine
I mean it when I say I'll bring you sometime
Someday
For fried catfish
And southern lovin.

I know what it means to come from a broken family too
Maybe within the brokenness
The deep emotive caverns of our inner silence or
Noise
Or the way our eyes are light and our eyebrows pale
Maybe it's within that commonality, we love.

Geology, goodness
You've got your own theories
We teach and we swing
Batter up
Batter up right into you
I explain in hisses that I just like to spar
I like to spar because so few can keep up
We both have our own shields.

I don't know what any of it means
I don't know that it matters
I'm not so much interested in the big picture of life anymore
Here in the moments
Where your touch makes me tremble
Or I make you laugh for a reason I don't understand
Or we reminisce on how we danced
Saying goodbye all the way to the door of my front porch
You wrote me before because something was on the line.

When you go home and find yourself resting
Fingers etching, find the comfort of knowing
That even a syllable from you
Would make me smile.