I’ll keep on loving you
Long after you start to
Look like your mother
Though she looks much
Too much like her brother.
I’ll keep on laughing at
The groaner puns you make
And eating the cakes
That taste like meatloaf
From Blavian yak ****
Because that is what,
To me, true love is.

It doesn’t take a wiz kid
To see what nature did
And I am sure I will be
A cartoon version of me
When I get to that stage
Where age has altered us
To having rear-ends like a bus
And skin like the spin cycle
Before the dryer gets there.
We’ll have hair like lint
To match the laundry bent
Of the last four lines.

And I know I won’t mind
Because it’s you I adore
And that is what love is for
To help us ignore the stuff
Like belly button fluff
And farting unashamedly
Even though we are blamedly
Guilty as recharged, stinking.
I am guilty of thinking
Things will continue to get worse
Until the nurse considers ******
When nobody heard her.

The destructive hail
Destroys the defenseless flowers
Yet,
They will grow again.

If you saw me in
the eyes of a starving man,
would you turn away?

This commitment that's
ordinary to many
catches up to me

and it walks with me.
Our eyes focused on pavement,
hands in our pockets.

Looking for the words
to feed strangers where our hearts
leave people hungry.

It does not matter if you wake up one mile away,
or fifty hours,
or if the entire globe separates the soles of our feet.
My eyes have memorized the language of your love,
the glowing warmth of your arms that is able to be felt
through a static telephone call,
a letter sleeping patiently inside an envelope,
promises sent shooting through the indigo heavens.


I will always be with you--
the rises and runs of your heartbeat
pounding inside your head, the rush of wine-colored blood
through translucent blue veins,
I will be as close as skin meets soul,
as sweat mingles with tears.


The ridges of your hands are roadmaps I will follow
until my heels grow calloused and blistered,
and when the sky darkens, your brown eyes
will become a compass that will point
in the direction of our dreams.


We go,
but love cannot.
We change,
but love does not.
We hold,
and love holds with us.


I will love you all over again in the morning
and we will always be together--
distance breaking nothing,
our faces shining in the same light
of tomorrow’s sun.

The hardest part of all of this is that you were not just the first person I was in love with, but the first thing I've ever loved at all. I think everyone needs to love something to be happy in life, and some people love their jobs, or school, or their home, or even themselves, but for me it was only you, and I don't know what to do now. I keep having dreams of people asking for my commitment and in those dreams the first thing I think about is when and how I will leave them. I keep having flashbacks to that evening we had dinner at the European brewery. You were joking about how if we ever broke up I would spend the rest of my life trying to replace you but I would never succeed. What if you were right? What if you were it? What if I am never able to love anyone else again?

I have to stop dating musicians.

They always
Break my heart
So they can write better songs.
They **** me without loving me
So they can create new sounds.

I have to stop dating musicians.

They always speak of their dreams
They speak of their future
And the things they will accomplish
But none of it
Ever includes me.

I have to stop dating musicians.

They are in love with their instruments
Married to their sounds
Fully committed to themselves
I'm nothing but a nightmare
Compared to their dreams.

I.
It is so simple.
Tuesday atmosphere bleeding
autumn rain down windowpanes,
the descent of fragile hopes
and hands intertwined a little
too tight for wondering.


II.
We are here; hazy within
the iridescent walls of my childhood home.
We slow dance to the fading refrigerator light,
our laughter reverberating down the stairs
I fell down when I was in kindergarten
and afraid of boys with loud voices.


III.
It is more complicated than they think.
We scour home decor magazines,
pointing at flattened apartment windows
overlooking the bustle of city chaos.
A young couple walks across the page
and into a dusk-painted room,
faces exuberant in the sunlight
of their newborn lives.
One day, we will be just like them, you tell me.
I almost forget that I have yet to turn
seventeen.


IV.
In my head, there is nothing wrong
with designing the future,
sketching myself into false realities
where I feel safe falling asleep
in someone else’s arms.
I have written myself within the spaces
of unpromised decades,
and I paint your hands, the ridges--
the crevices in which I have placed
an abundance of gemstone promises
that do not shatter in the light of something real.



V.
We are young
but I love you.
To the rest of the world, we are teenagers
clutching each other’s spines in grass fields
when we cannot even comprehend
what we are praying for.
Hold me.
I love you.
I cannot promise this enough.

if there ever is a day
when I find a one for me
the one with whom I'll lay
and commit to fully
then that will be the day
that I will lose myself
seem though it may
that I have new wealth
thoughts of me
will go away and
I'll be unhappy