cursed to romanticize
the temperature it was
when we had our first kiss,
to meditate on your
cadences,
to memorialize the seconds it took
for you to call me beautiful.

my rhetorical self, the
one i've designed for you to
admire, has had a broken heart
for years. i'm getting closer
to discovering the boundary
between her and i. my
body, her heart, your mouth,
synchronized affirmations
to the unreal.