You offered me your body,
I offered in return:

A tuna fish sandwich,
A nice piece of carnelian,
Maybe a book or two about odd things
like death by electrocution or Leonardo da Vinci
or the history of the upright bass,
Endless records,
Enough jazz to paint the world blue,
My mouth forming the shapes of notes,
A breath from my own lungs,
The scarf which was lovingly knit for me
by my one remaining friend,
Lipstick, bright red and smooth,
Feathers from a hawk that I found by the road,
Dried pink roses from a corsage,
Two baby teeth in a container that once held film,
Hair shorn with a dull kitchen knife,
A collar of cracked burgundy leather,
Sachets smelling faintly of lavender,
A mirror which was cracked on my thirteenth birthday,
One lace glove.

Why did you leave?

you and i are fretful, wary fish--
old souls. anxious beings.
sometimes i think that you and i are part of a whole--
the two fish tied together by the rope.

as the song says,

"i wanna ruin our friendship,
we should be lovers instead;
i don't know how to say this,
'cause you're really my dearest friend."

but honestly,
i crave you in the most innocent of ways.

if i could kiss you just once,
simply sleep next to you and be at peace,
that would be more than enough for me.

we made a pact -- at thirty we will get married
just because we can.
but it hurts --
i know it doesn't mean the same to you
as it does to me

i just want to marry you someday
live in a house near the Atlantic
and the rooms will be full of cacti and succulents
the scent of baked goods will waft out from the kitchen
where we will be battling the cats
for space on the table to let the macarons cool --
vanilla bean, rose raspberry, chocolate peppermint

some days, this is all i can think about
and i could never admit that to you

Twenty seven years:
Of doubt and fears
Silence and tears
Future is unclear.

New identity embrace:
Not just a fad or craze
Done walking in a maze
Yep happily I am an Ace.

The glistening sun sets,
leaving a silhouette of hanging trees,
a decoration on pink faded walls.
Humming cicadas and chirping crickets,
play in a symphony of the night.
Bike rides and park games in darkness,
softball games in the bright field lights.
Each crack of the ball and bat create a chaos of teammate screams.
Lost every game, but won each time.
A refreshing water runs on slippery rocks,
swimming among fish and ducks,
Soaking bodies run home,
Baggy shirts, gym shorts,
Adults and children mix in a weekly party,
Beer bottle caps and soda cans clink to the ground.
Love and laughter surrounds a crackling open fire,
Warming bodies and hearts.
Little feet race to where the sidewalk ends,
the grass grows thick.
It is here where teams are picked and knees are scarred.
12am games are played,
cans are kicked, ghosts roam graveyards, and flags are captured.
Waiting to go home, hours and hours of waiting
Hours of talking of all different ages,
Country music and guitar melodies play throughout the street,
a lullaby of our childhood.
Television reruns at 2am entertain tired minds,
Couch and floor beds of blanket forts,
Carried up to bed to sleep in comfort at 4am, the chirping birds, already wishing a good morning to most, but goodnight to this home.
The raccoons rattle and the woodpeckers poke in a serenade to sleep,
In a neighborhood of blaring nights and silent mornings.
Each week, the time flew by.

to those who say
war is a battle fought with weapons and threats
oh how lucky you are
to not know what it's like having a war in your head

I build up the walls
all around
to prevent their words
from bringing me down

to those who say
war is a battle fought with weapons and threats
oh how lucky you are
to not know what it's like having a war in your head

it's all over now
they have gotten in
oh my hopeless head
the demons win

to those who say
war is a battle fought with weapons and threats
oh how lucky you are
to not know what it's like having a war in your head

Love, now, is considered 'cute'.
That's all there is to it.

It's not looking up at the stars and
wishing for that same blazing fire
inside yourself.

It isn't those long, after-dark
conversations we had when
the constellations sang us melodies
in Ursa Major and Ursa Minor until
we remembered that I could play the piano
and you were alright on the recorder
and we joined in.

Sometimes, you'd stroke your fingers
through my hair, and my tears would
stroke the piano keys at the beautiful
audacity of your perfection.

Our shadows would intertwine,
flecked with tiny shards of the moonlight
and its spittle,
and it would seem to us that all
the great expanses and extravagances
of our universe had aligned to give us
this moment.

I'm told that wasn't love either.
No. Love is cute.

Love, according to the here and now,
is not what Shakespeare promised me
it would be.

It is not speaking the sort of words
that have stretched from the dawn of
the dawn of time and have tangled and
coiled and wrapped us together
like words are ribbons and we're
a human maypole.

It isn't seeing the sun and thinking
of the way your eyes lit up when
you first read my poetry.

After, you'd rise from where you sat
to the right of me, the east
and whisper to me how
lucky you were, how lucky we were
to be here, in this world, together.

Our hands would clasp, my small fingers
warmed by the inexplicably intrinsic
sense of togetherness.
Of you. Of me.

The two words blended like
we were only colours and this
world our painted grey palette.

None of it mattered.
None of it mattered, because none of it was love.
'Love', according to the modern mind, is simply
Cute.

We were boiled down,
like we'd been pushed into a pan and
they couldn't understand why we wouldn't fit
even once they'd chopped us up.

Everything - because wasn't love everything? -
was just plagiarised love letters scribbled on the
dog-eared corners of textbooks.

And though to us we were Nut and Geb,
Gaia and Ouranos,
Romeo and Juliet, if Romeo had
had your freckles and Juliet had
had my temper and they'd had
love built on the transcendence
of time instead of party crashing.

Except, to everyone else in the here and now,
we weren't. We weren't *******
Nut and Geb.
We were cute.

Somehow, love seems to equate to
you carrying my books around for me
like you don't  have enough of your own to drag.

Love is suits and cravats and
prom dresses with stick on sparkles
because the night sky is no longer enough.

Love is kisses on the end of text messages
to replace the kisses in real life,
and pink and red heart emoticons to
pretend that we all still have hearts that are capable of
anything more than 'cute'.

And when I close my eyes and try to remember that it was real,
what we had, remember that it was the kind of untarnished love that
I could look in and see our reflection,
it's not your voice that I hear, but the words of 'love' in the here and now.

'You two are so cute together!'
'I wish I could have a relationship like yours. It's adorable.'
Quaint. Charming. Darling.
Cute.

Love, now, is considered 'cute'.
Even when it's not.

More than a myth than Nut and Geb ever were.

Even when it's real.
Especially when it's real.

That's all there is to it.