Love letter to Rome:You have always been,and always will be my favorite city. Grand and magnificent like you,somehow you like me back.So many people have been desperately trying to approach you but I know they have failed.I selfishly know that I am the one for you even though you have thousands of mistresses who would like to throw their coins away in Fontana di Trevi and wait for hours to get into Vatican city.But I,standing in front of you can say that I am the luckiest,because I feel you through touches,winds,cobblestone roads,the roads to your past,and the people you nurtured.Like you,they took me in generously,they reach out,they communicate with me and embrace me.Rome,you may be everyone's heartthrob,you may be compared with thousands of glamorous cities,but don't forget I am the one who's always here praising you and adoring you for eternity.

It was in Rome
You guys got the table(cade,nevin)
So we stood there
Till you asked us if we'd like to join

Sure I said so
awkward first cause you somehow look like Ryan Gosling(no you look better, RG has never been my type)
Blue eyed boy from Iowa
Strangely enough, my bedtime T-shirt says Iowa hawkeyes

We talked bout beer ,Shandy, Greek islands ,Prague,Bristol and Iowa. Why should I know?
then you turned to me
Hey, fun fact, do you know the British first sounds like American?
Why should I know?Why did you say so?
But that was the most intimating thing on the table.

Strangely enough, you only asked my name when you left, and everything was left in Rome.

In a Bluebird toffee tin
Are a hundred letters –
Most of them doodle-stamped and
Delivered by hand.
Unlike the letters I sent to you
They do not smell of spritzed cologne,
(A trick that I learned from Grease)
They are not messy
Or tea stained,
But perfect powder blue
And allowing for small extravagances –
The Cursive of the Obsessive,
Cursed by neatness and perfect hearts.

I pick one out at random,
A casually cruel one sent from Rome –
I imagine you blinking on a balcony
With dazzles on your collarbone,
A teeny tiny sugarless coffee
At your side,
And a pen tapping your knee.

“I’m not a **** at all –“ you wrote,
"It’s only that you are gregarious
In the most DISGUSTING way.
That’s your problem not mine -
Your optimism won’t catch you.
(Cynicism won’t catch you either,
But it has the courtesy not to throw you.)
I’m stopping now,
By the time you get this
I’ll be back home.
What pointlessness we endure for one other.
I miss you, as you say,
‘ever so’ –
Bedtime here is a source of misery.”

And then you signed your name,
Tiny,
Small,
Impossibly graceful,
Just like yourself.

You were always nasty
When you missed me.

I like to
  kiss your
    liquid
      lovers
        lips
                       ­            dissolving sugar sweet majesty
                                                         ­                                      your highness
        kneeling to the
      queen of
    centuries

I live in first quarter of the moon
  mixing tapes
   to match
                                                           ­                the rhythms of the maiden
        with the
                                                             ­                    melodies of the mother

                                          I will love you in secret

Of it, the state must not know                      Out, the fire must not blow

do
  not
    let
      them
        burn
          me
    ­        alive

            I promise
          to keep
        my commitments
      cataloged and
    separate my
   chastity in one drawer
  my sensuality in
another

                                                     ­                                               I can be both

                                                           ­       I can be both

                                I can live on as an empire

and exist as the city in ruin

I will bear the sword and
  wear the heavy paws
    in the belly of the Colosseum
                                                       ­                             I will sit on the balcony
                                                         ­                         bored and eating grapes
                                                          ­                                               calling out
"Execution!"

Pinch one, your Holiness
Lay pipe, your Eminence.
*******,
Quips Rome,
That's tight.

Baby boy in baby boots
Ruddy reddened caligae
On ruby crowned Caligula

He fills the shoes
Red shoes, blood shoes
Blood boots, blood red
(Too red) too well

Grow into your boots
Blood boots, blood shoes
Silk shoes, soft sheets

My sweetest son in soldier’s clothes
In army boots, with baby’s blood
In baby veins, in baby boots

My starlit son the demon king
In purple robes, stained amaranthine
Laurel crowned on merlot hair
On baby's head with baby's boots

My withered king, my sweetest son
In little boots with a baby's sword
Made Rome as red as his merlot hair
And amaranthine robes
And ruddy boots

Crumbling cities.
Beauty in decay has always reminded me
of you.
When we were little and climbing trees
you told me of ow you would be great
one day,
like Athens and Rome.
I had laughed and called you silly.
Those were places and not people, I had said.
You shoved your tongue out and clamored:
"Watch me do it!"
I think I finally understand what you meant.
Singing songs to me in my backyard you
were amazing, thriving like you had sworn
to me
those many years before.
We danced and screamed from hilltops
with cities unfolding beneath
our mere human feet.
You weren't kind of the world, but you were
king of mine.
Later that night you dropped me off
at my front door.
Kissed my forehead and murmured
"Goodbye, I love you"
instead of wishing me goodnight.
You fell in the time between night and dawn
and when I woke up the next morning
our empire was gone.