Dear Poetry, Please be gentle. I’ve admired you for years, and despite all of my tears, I’ll never forget the way you caressed my heart. Warming it and patching it word by word and verse by verse. But this will be my first, and this is not very well rehearsed, So Dear Poetry, be gentle. Let me stumble and tumble through the first and second lines but don’t run towards the concubines just yet. There’s hope for us right? Dear poetry, don’t go so quickly. Come sit with me by the window and tell me what way the wind blows. Whisper to my soul all the things I need to know. Lift my hair with your metaphors and beat a rhythm so deep I have to feel my heart beat to know I’m alive, because you - you are the only thing that makes me unique. I can weave through words and sing the similes until I get too dizzy, and when I look up, there’s no eyes I can’t meet. Dear Poetry, be mine. Let’s sit in the grass and laugh on our backs Let’s wade through the creek bed and read thoughts in my head, Let’s skip like my heart when he played his part. Let’s drown scorned love with ciders in a pub. Let’s be silly and really, really- - Dear Poetry, I’ll be at your door every day. Waiting for a hint, a taste, of what to say. Line by line I’ll build you a castle, stanza by stanza add a rung to the ladder, and poem by poem I’ll make us stronger until I can no longer see the ground and all we have is bound- Dear Poetry, Let’s do this again sometime.