I never really put much thought into love.
I figured it was something imaginary.
Parents say I love you.
But then they scream at each other behind slammed doors.
Boys tell you they love you to get in your pants.
Girls seem to love everything whether it's fluffy, pretty or just **** attractive.

I've never been one to believe in it all.
It never made much sense.
Always a meaningless word.
Signifying as little as four simple letters.

But then I met you.
And it may have been a sunny day.
And everyone may have been in high spirits.
But we walked.
And we talked.
And I think I felt our souls bounce off each other.
Like they were old friends reconnecting.
Catching up.
Yet you were totally new.

And two days.
Two days is all it took for my soul to understand that it found its long lost friend.
But then we were separated again.
And our souls are struggling to stay in touch.

But I feel deep down that you're not gonna be gone long.
We'll see each other again.
And we'll be Soulmates.
And I know for a fact I will run anywhere with you.

Because the feeling I get when I'm with you.
It's as if those four empty letters are full at last.
And they're full to capacity.
I know it's not lust.
I feel it in my soul.
This is love.

Full sta(r)ring
I sit as the window
was a pleading enormous nobody
he declared my head
practically lost.

2.
flustered you’ll doubt that
he glanced
sleep can’t.

3.
Crooked conversation listeners
clenched authority grimy
beside the sight attempt

4.
that chanced amusement
obliged its stiff attempt
by askance explanation
he and the slipped tongue
therefore sitting
on the heels of friday

5.
overhead the engine slipped suddenly when
she whispers explanation
grand

6.
growling hurried difficulty
shouldn’t reason but
the creature bitterly
declared in smaller steps
"you’ll doubt when i"

7.
I blinked and riddle
the shifting moral of executed
fright the cunning
underpromised
dependent muddle
congressional huddle

8.
not the sadistic wet world
glaring or the the the
defended
answers soaped the the the
dyed course
hello doesn’t the the the
let my coming

9.
adding highest denial
we tear the despair
rolling secret sea so far
winter guard softly introduced
my remembered underneath

10.
his daughter
a canary warily dared
to pretend to drink in
bound education of judging

11.
the height dating
and pushy she interrupting
like the party
for wonderful
      couple of sharks

12.
elbow listening did dishes
she declared panicky
we will go by asking
uh um
curled hair blank slate
forming saucepan all sobbing

As you reach a mountain’s peak, your weight slightly decreases as you get further and further away from the Earth’s core and gravity loosens its hold ever so slightly. If you have ever felt this tiny change in more than a physical sense, then this is for you.

This is for train tracks and box cars, this is for every road we planned to trip but never departed, this is for the difference between August and October and the first snowflake on my sister’s freckles a whole week before Halloween.

Because nothing is as sturdy as uncertainty. Nothing is more constant than the ever changing blues right before dusk in the summertime, where the deepest blue is just over your head. It’s the untruth of the moving target and the integrity of the unlocked window and driving through mountains during a snowstorm on Christmas morning to be home in time for my brother’s favorite joke, but I take the turn too quickly and spin my mother’s car into the woods.

Because I can only trust something viscous and permeable, and there’s this moment when you first see someone push their hair out of their eyes, or take off their glasses that is so identifiably human that I can’t get it out of my head.

The arrangement of my mother’s garden isn’t one I remember because I want to. I remember it because it held her hands when I couldn’t and the hockey game on the car radio wasn’t important because my father said it was a playoff game, but because it was a place we could exchange our thin ice for someone else’s.

This paralysis of analysis lives in the heart of transitional phrases.

I miss taking the train in the mornings and the subways in the evenings when I spent last summer  in Philadelphia more than I miss you.

I’m more confused in a way that forgives myself and I’m more creative in the work that i do. I’m more honest in all aspects and more understanding in my suspects.

You ran the maze past sanity and doubt
as if
your skies with the stone rock

could speak past a whisper.

I hid in perfume bottles notes to my old self
and I buried the harbinger dolls.

quiet boy stepped into my looking glass and handed me his helmet
years past until i noticed his long graceful hands in my hair
and i turned to see where he had come from

it was just past nine when i took the zucchini out of the oven and waited
it was half past ten by the time he rang the bell
and i sat nervous and shallow

he gets lost in his own world and finds his hands in mine
we stepped back from our maps and abandoned our ships
i sank in with the anchors

it was just last night when i realized i could love you
it was three junes since i first wanted to
i kissed you in the nighttime.

I wasn’t ready for your sky-eyed nostalgia any more than I was ready for my suffragette seclusion.

I couldn’t have swallowed any more of my snake bitten hollow intellect than that which allowed me to kiss your throat to the stars skin.

So I’m hoping the ochre-rayed sun moon stars rain clock parts will aid in the time that can make things like they were in the gazebo with the puddles stuck in my shoes and your hat already full of thoughts.

And then can we spin around again?

I put dates on my wanting to remember my tactile experience at the expense of my memory

"that’s very meta, isn’t it?"

alternation

sublimation

consecration

They have spent their hours wanting for a moment

and They have spent their moments wanting for the hours

I was ready

Swallowing all anxiety like a pill

Armed with nothing but words

Consumed with mere prediction

Intoxicated with imagination

I was ready

Stepping on my demons to reach you

You're in my head, you're always in my head

Yet you're not in my sights, you've never been in my sights

Not since that night, that fateful night

I struggle to accept that my timing is once again errant, as I struggle to write for you better lines

I am armed with words, words for only your ears

But only air and dust greet me in the place that you should be

My words, you will never hear, but it's you that I crave to see

So who's the real loser here?

Clearly it's me

now we are
where we were
where we always should have been

we've come back here
to try again
to be now who we were then