i want to tell you that you smell like sandalwood soap. and that i can't keep my eyes off your hands. and i want to ask you what was the last thing that made you cry? and then i'd think about what tears would look like in your beautiful eyes, and then i might cry myself. and i want to tell you that you look like heaven on earth, and you wouldn't believe me so i'd tell you again. and again. i want to look at you like you're the last thing i'll ever see and memorize everything about you. i want to give you all of my favorite things and take you to all of my favorite places and then find out what yours are. i want to know what you're thinking about and why. i want to read your words and tattoo them on my tongue. i want to touch you for longer than a second. i want to show you what it feels like to be wanted. i want to show you everything i see in you, if you'd let me.

The old woman at the bus stop
is a lover of all things:
I can see it in her tired smile
and the way her hands
are determined not to shake
as she colors in the squares of
today’s crossword puzzle.
Focused on her mosaic, she
does not hear
my dragging footsteps or
rasping breaths.
As I collapse next to her, everything is
quiet and I
hear her blood rushing
in her veins, singing a melody her
lips forgot.
I pretend I am her for
five sacred minutes,
finding mirrors in puddles
on the pavement and
battling time and gravity
trying not to sink through sidewalk into sewer
trying to spend eternity here.
But the bus comes like always,
its wheels
screaming silence into oblivion and
ripping loose newspaper pages
from their holy tranquility between
two leathery palms
and tearing the old woman and me
apart.

nobody dreams of chipped teeth or
love handles, but the reality is
we fall in love with them all the same

if you had never fallen from heaven, i would not have loved those broken wings. if your blood did not trail into my house, you would not lay on my couch as i wrapped you up. i've heard heaven is lovely, free of pain and brokenness — but when you are whole, you do not need someone to complete you. no one looks after you, or asks you how you are. but there is only so long i can tend to your wounds. so why, after all these years, do you not spread your wings to fly? did you really fall from heaven, or did you jump?

I'm waiting, chasing pavements
the ones that kissed your tires
impatience found my failures
and lit my head on fire.
My mind is racing to you
my eyes are burning still
these smolders send me skyward
and flatten me until
I'm falling on my doorstep
gray and less than real
you crush me as you're leaving;
my sweet achilles heel.
You left me calm resilience
a scent I can't erase,
rose petals drooping gladly
I sink down in the vase
and ponder you, like fresh air
willing me to breathe
and be with you again
as if you'd never leave.

i-squished-words-like-chewing-gum-between-my-teeth-hoping-that-i could-blow-a-bubble-bigger-than-my-head-and-more-impressive-than-­my-face-and-then-you-looked-in-my-direction-just-as-my-breath-his­sed-between-my-lips-and-you-couldn't-see-me-just-my-swelling-beac­h-ball-of-jumbled-words-for-one-quarter-second-before-they-burst-­and-stuck-all-over-my-skin-and-i-flushed-pinker-than-bubble-gum-a­nd-i'll-choke-on-every-word-before-i-ever-have-to-see-you-again

a summer scent seeps into spring,
the bitter hint of our endings
the years, begun in swelling tides,
now ebbing toward the shores of time.
this summer heat is scathing now;
the sky found wanting of her clouds
and sun the sole tenant therein,
burns with echoes of what has been.

so long ago, she deigned to rise
from darkness to uncharted highs
and now, our greenest life is graced
by torrid waves shone from her face
once lush and verdant, now descend
the lifeless leaves to life's grand end
our feet will find, in passing by
remains of those who knew the sky

so autumn falls, apprising death
and beauty takes a ragged breath,
exhales a gust of frigid truth,
reminds us of expired youth,
then lies down in her crystal bed
as isolation takes her stead
our memories and warmth are lost
'neath blankets of life's lonely frost

we seldom see the craven sun
we crave that fire that kept us young
and full of life's bright, loving rage
but fateful wind has turned the page
it leaves a blank chapter for us,
to our ink-stained fingers entrusts
invention and a flash of time,
future ahead and past behind

where life began, we pick up now
and to the blessed spring endow
an offset to the bitterness
that once beset our eagerness
we suffered, learned, and now we fight
not nature; not the flow of time
but to preserve humanity
to safeguard that insanity
we named love, for we have found
it is all but by time bound.

We dream in the dark
too close to our hearts
to be hidden from view
to be scattered askew
like the raindrops that fall
through windows, down walls
aside bleak shooting stars
that land somewhere too far
away from our hearts,
as we dream in the dark.

We dream in the dark,
finding it hard to see
what's in front of ourselves
equally cluelessly.
It's funny how different
we see things in this light -
I'm dreaming at midday,
you're dreaming at night.
I stood next to you
as we walked down the street
you watched people pass by
and I watched our feet.
I thought you might hear
the thoughts my mind screamed
I forgot you weren't listening
I forgot that we dreamed.
I forgot, since the start
we have dreamed in the dark.

We dream in the dark,
we dream and we paint
now in this state of mind
I might lose track of fate
I don't see the sun rising
for the colors and strokes
I don't hear the clock ticking
for the words that you spoke.
But still, time will exist
as well as will fate
regardless of us
and our ignorant state.
I can sleep days away
I can close my mind's eye
and it won't change a thing
it won't buy any time.
So I hide the same thoughts
in the back of my mind
for a stormier day
for a much colder night
hide the dangerous art
that I dream in the dark.