It was not love at first sight. When you walked into the room the rest of the world did not slow down. There was no movie magic moment where our eyes met and I knew that you were the only girl I was ever going to fall in love with. Instead you were longing at first glance, yearning for a love that I never could have imagined before. I couldn’t picture our wedding or growing old together but I could vividly see the two of us together. Cuddled under blankets reading on a Sunday night. Decorating our apartment for Halloween. I could see Indian takeout in bubble baths with three cats curled up beside the sink. You were not love at first sight but you were better, you were real. You made love believable. I never had faith in finding a fairytale romance but in you I found forever. A reality of two souls bound together by a force neither of them can explain. You may not have been my love at first sight but you’re my love in every glance since. It’s heartbreaking that I can only look at the world through rose coloured glasses while you live in a world so far from make believe.

You say you love with a rose.
The delicate red petals,
reminding you of my lips.
I say they are more like your blush.

You say I love you with a rose.
As the thorns kiss you hand,
Reminding you of how my teeth kiss your neck.
I say it’s more like our fingers, despite to hold on.

You say I love you with a rose.
The firm, rich, stem reaching up to hold the bloom.
Reminding you of my shoulders willing to hold the world.
I say it’s more like your will, unyielding and unbroken.

what the **** went wrong last night?
bodies
dim lit bedroom lights
and i think that i love you, right
don’t leave me out to dry
i thought that you’d be by my side
chairs porch side draped in morning light
trace fingers up and down your spine
your fingers interlocked with mine

grasp at the air, try and
clutch the body the mind forgot.
feel the chill of empty air beneath
spread fingers reaching
for someone no longer there. keep
reaching for a familiar body and find
foreign instead. find
newness where old curves sat, see
harsh lines where bare arms used to lay, feel
that foreign body. commit it
to memory. remember
where old flesh resurrected, where
he left one body not to migrate
to another but to rebuild, and
remake, and recycle, and become
something new. how he became
someone only he knew.

A cardiac flush paints just respiratory
via ivory of ribs name to launch, bear, ovulate,
an explicit painter your mother would never count acceptable like
a feather's charcoal flight
a whitened bow of silk for your neck to gush with,
in a mess adorn,
Pueyo's nomad or form turned poem I take
greater than any body's gifted *******,
but enamel of guitar's caramel my bonfire took for granted chips.

Let's imagine we identify
****** for David's curls on doe eyes for a woman in return.
Let's imagine we identify
peach marble ways of men tinting what as agender stars in ashes lie.
Let's imagine we identify
*** at last as nameless liberty for home.
Wounds, impeccable fire platter, a night holds.

Once in her time a nightingale nurse held lone for corridors light,
might my clacks and nervous chirps on a lantern in a tea for someone
rushed my fingers bless just like her alone...

An empty gaze. A late clock.

And I and Christ perched with a washing bowl at someone's feet,
we meek but at praise, unattainable,
And I a statue with silk black at my end of curves' robe.

I might wish to serve one of those corridor nights
without a cover tugging at my edges
yet a hopefully audacious male David gaze in intent,
for a wayfaring soul on my couch,
for glorious shame their touch would put on my ways
of the acrylic of ***,
for brightening bland stars agender into honey,
and my work for bare choices
errands
picked.

Gasp.

if time could tell the longings of your heart I think you would love me

your mark is a fiery ball growing inside me, like a warm pain that reminds me I'm alive.

I think I would cut my hair and become a man if it meant you would love me too

I remember you telling everyone I left my bra at your house because I wanted you.

around you I'm a paper bark tree, spreading myself thin for you

I remember buying you a book for your writing, I loved when you sang your poems, it felt like listening to myself

I remember telling you I wish there was a male version of you so we could be together, I remember kissing your brother, you didn't like that.

we where a wet crystal ball, slipping through my fingers