we were in the back seat of his car the first time that he kissed me. it was sweet and it was young and it was innocent and i couldn't fully focus on it because i heard a song through the speakers on the dashboard and laughed about how wrong the lyrics were when i sang it to myself

take me down to paradise city,
where the tips of his calloused fingers softly run over the tops of mine because he is too shy to actually hold my hand;
                  where the air smells like the ocean and the sky is as bright as his eyes are when he's  
                  passionate about something;
   where the woods are always empty but we still run through them every
   wednesday night because those are the nights that his mother isn't home and his father still
   breaks out tequila and gin because he didn't get the daughter he wanted

oh, won't you please take me home?
and he better not ask me what my address is because he should know that a home is different than a house and my home can be found deep within the far away corners of his wandering mind, and in the valves in his heart which are accompanied by a slow heart rate because he's built like an athlete even though he's too timid to try out for football like his brother did

people usually name islands in the caribbean when asked about paradise, but if the textbook definition is a place of a extreme beauty and happiness, my answer will always be honest when i say that my paradise is anywhere i can get lost with him,

like the back seat of his car