"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

what an odd kind of satisfaction I get
from having a little secret between
you & I.
sure, it doesn't change anything,
but by not changing anything
*it changes everything.

The
three
words
we long to hear
above
all others -
You.
Belong.
Here.

The lines
around
your eyes
and mouth
that
appear
and
disappear
with every
sunburst smile
are the
little maps
of where you have been
and
where I hope
to travel.