The material was stretched tight
deep furrows in the red and black
pulled across your shoulder blades so severely
but you were all soft edges.
The blunt edge of a 2B pencil
gently shadowing in the crease
where stomach met hip bones
and warm.
It was lovingly done.

This mind,
I bemoan it so,
that it cannot seamlessly
retain,
replay,
all of the words you have given me
so that I may overthink them endlessly
and hold them close
in lieu of an embrace

What a thing it is to claim a smile.
To grant command
to ranks of muscles ever-ready,
but rarely used,
to produce such radiance
that means I must turn away lest I be blinded.
Regardless of all other commitments
I lay claim to that smile of yours
if only unofficially
if only just for now.

How can I?
How could I even attempt to try?
The truth of the matter is
there are not enough words,
and fewer still of beauty,
to allow me to paint your portrait with any sense of justice
and I cannot communicate such depth of feeling,
that deep heart pull
that resonance within my chest and soul itself
with eyes alone,
though I try
every day.

Something I've observed
and maybe you've noticed it too
that your dance is always the same
with steps well-tread, familiar;
a frown,
a concerted effort to hold that cigarette in place
before the resolution;
you sit back,
always one ankle resisting on the opposite knee,
contented.

Nothing serves to fumble with your heartstrings
quite so well as a ceremony of the dead
(and nearly so)
where a tall man,
with black tie draped across broken heart,
wrestled with his voice;
in order not to display
what we are so practiced at hiding.

Often we have disagreed, but now I refuse to hold my tongue
and shall raise pen to meet pen, watch the words clash in the air,
for how could you grant such a way of living superiority?
When the sensual and the intellect can meet as one
in capturing a young man's beauty in such a way
that he leaps from the page,
causing the reader to sail away away too.

But even if we saw eye to eye, as shortsighted as each other,
lack of intellect be ******.
I could not wish to travel there
to a place devoid of him, of all that encompasses him,
devoid of green eyes and jet hair,
a space within which his voice does not resonate
and participate in such an unequal trade
as to exchange immortality for a life without him.

Revered as you are, I do not agree.
I shall champion the dearth of intellect,
revere in all things sensual, as this is all I am fit for in your eyes,
but I shall be in love
and it is this I choose
over an infinite rhapsody of lifetimes.

I must ask,
did the breaker of your nose
ever imagine
that it could form so permanent a fixture in my mind?

Did they ever think
that this feature,
so proudly crooked
would come to define a man?

The same man who bites his nails
who commands rooms with voice alone
whose shirt lays against his chest
just so.