If there were a formula
for the way her lips seek out
for mine while I am still attached
to those of a boy,
I would plug it through with
the determination
of a scientist, feeding it
back and forth through the
machines until someone
could give me an answer.

She visits me
in my sleep, bleeds
through the walls of
our separate dimensions
until she finds a way
into my heart. From there,
she rides my bloodstream up
into my brain, she puts
her hands on my controls
and guides my dreams

through to her childhood
home, where she knows
I'll fall in love with the gap
between her teeth and the way
she practices the word
"kindergarten"
when she thinks no one
can hear her.

I could never find her
through the keys
of my Macbook,
she calls to me
through typewriters in
store windows, when I think
I've lost her, I go into bookstores
and flip through the pages
in the poetry section until

teasing

she gives me a word,
just enough
of a puzzle to hold me
until next time. I think
when it's completed
it will look like her freckles,
the eyeshadow she spreads
over her heartache, the lipstick
she wears to feel like a woman
on the days when she needs to act
like a man, if I were a man.

I'd no longer be captivated
by the mysticism
of their skin. No longer see
the revolutionary twisting
through their spines. But
if I were a man, I wouldn't have
the same parts as my lover.

Maybe then
we'd be
just different enough
for me to tell her
how I feel.