so why then are you so far away where are your lips where is that smile and why am i longing for the corners of your mouth and the steady thrum of your hand in mine

i know your lips and all that comes with them so why do you deceive me why why am i still falling asleep alone when i care for you, for your laughter, and i water this garden but you only come out at night and when you are here you are present and it is you and i can feel myself in us and then you are gone and a part of me is gone you took a piece of me with you and your lips they are gone too but still i am so cold and i miss our legs entangled and us face to face fast asleep and how sometimes you’ll wake and kiss me on the forehead and i could cry with the shame of this love but it is here and it is you but you are gone and all i have is this stupid **** about your lips and my loneliness

I know your lips i have seen them curl with mirth and crinkle with laughter. I have seen them soft with sleep, i have felt the brush of them against my ear when you speak in that low voice. I know what they can do to me. I know your lips i have felt them against my neck, i have felt them work their way down my navel and make a home in my hips and your lips, I know your lips. I know the feel of them against mine as you are saying goodbye and always i know the feel of your lips when you say hello again

Before,
I only had a flimsy, hazy memory of one autumn evening.
I was waiting to pick up in the boys' hall, lounging on the floor when he appeared from nowhere and introduced himself.
Charming and tall and self-deprecating, I warmed to him immediately. (His eyes still have the same affect on me as they did back then)
Later, he told me he remembered the first time we met, and it wasn't in that moment.
The weekend before classes started, I was smashed in the courtyard with D, getting hit on by these nasty *** upperclassmen, when he walked by with a group of friends.
I, obnoxious, drunkenly charming, singled him out and I--
I hit on him.
Inebriated, unabashedly. Later, his comments about his eyebrows and the faces he pulled confused me, until
one night, laughingly, he asked me if I remembered the night I met him. He told me, gleefully, how I complimented him on his eyebrows. I don't think I've ever been more mortified, only to find out that he was just as embarrassed by the joke he made the night he found me outside his door, the night I thought we first met...

I was 16, following I-90 with my two best friends, no sleep till Missoula, MT.
The sun rose at our backs and we stopped for breakfast. Lack of sleep and fear for my future caught up to me as daylight broke, and I broke down in the bathroom of a Denny's, sobbing violently.
3 years later, on the summer solstice--
I was crying again, for different reasons, in a warm bath at a Motel 6. I was crying for all the places I had been, for how far I had come, for how far I had left to go.
With all the highs came equal lows.
That weekend with him was a turning point for me, but I didn't realize it then.

i want you always, laughing and smiling, stretching in my living room.
i want to be sharing a cigarette on the steps, your arm around me.
i want you breathless and giggling above me. i want your smell on my skin and your fingers in my hair. i want to hear the timbre of your voice in my sleep for the rest of my dreams. every moment with you is like a vacation (paradise) outside of myself. words are for the weak. we let our bodies speak for themselves. until this is over, i want, i want, i want.

you weren't the first and you won't be the last, but for now i am happy for you always pulling me closer and waking to the warmth of you under my sheets each rainy day we spend together.

the things that ***** the mind,
the injustice of memory and its patchy, depthless murk.
remind your brain of moments--remember, remember, remember this one, this time, this feeling, the colors, the laughter.

there is so much here you will never begin to touch.
but here are these words, these thoughts, these times.
don't forget.