When the song of love plays,
I won't have it on repeat.
When love is in the air,
I'll wear a mask. Don't need to get love sick.
When love tries to brush,
I'll stand my ground, not to get swept off my feet.
When love holds a knife,
it won't steal my heart. I won't entertain a thief.
And when love goes lost,
it won't make me cry or give me grief.

But isn't that what we all say?
Till love does all of those things,
and we fall in love one day.

Yes! Love is definitely strange.

You must have known.
That day I held your hand and you held my gaze
And the air was thick with smoke and unspoken words and tiresome clichés.
Your eyes crinkled softly like they always do.
Always, always in the pretentious books I would pour over for hours as I try to envision myself right there,
Comforting myself with the idea that someone, one day, will dance with me to the sound of nothing but two hearts beating in unison.
There is something desperately intimate about oxygenation.
Always in these silly, profound books, they describe their darling’s eyes with every hue known to man.
Deep, aquamarine, sparkling crystal orbs that you would be so happy to drown in.
Entrancing and stormy forests.
Pools of warm honey with gold flecks in them, sweet as dandelion wine.

I will not condescend to compare your eyes to saccharine.
Or bodies of water, for that matter, or trees.
I will not waste time equalizing them to shades of the rainbow.
What are eyes, really,
Other than a means to see?
All that is beautiful and all that is clean.
I hold my own eyes in higher esteem than yours, dear,
Because they allow me to revel in the way yours light up when you smile.
How the skin underneath creases and wrinkles in all the most endearing ways
Like the infinite pages of a book in some foreign language
That only I can understand.
The ability to do so is a prerogative of the infatuated.

I wonder if you’ll let me read this book more often now that we’re here, two forgotten souls grinning stupidly at each other in the dark.
You must have known, then, that I would spend every day of the rest of my life reading this book if you only allowed me to do so.
Embedded in my mind was the way the corners of your mouth shot up towards the heavens.
I did not have to trace it to know that it was there.
You must have known.
There was not a crumb of my being you did not hold in the callused palm of your hand.
All of the streetlights were doused by the blanket of the night and it was truly not a movie-worthy moment because there were no stars and the moon was out of sight and there were stray cats padding around in the neglected garbage dumpster and I could not even remember why we were laughing so hard and I loved you.
Unequivocally.

be mine

on this lovers day

red velvet russian roulette

and blood worn lingerie

our chaos swept the city

now a vacant town is our ballroom

the Romeo to my Juliet

“Where art thou?”

I know you hear me calling you.

I’ll mimic Matterhorn or the worn ways we window gaze and swipe left
or turn right on the green light of another cliche
If you swear gray is all the shades you’ll
put on lamps to match the grayscale duvet
Then catch me if you cat o’ nine tails
a swallowed whale,
We swear with chapped lips a waterworn promise
Maybe the Amish had it right and we’re a little bit snobbish.
I’ll Jack O’Lantern your etch-a-sketch erotica,
Not much scarier, these days, trick or treat.
Q-tips got your tongue? I’ll Question where you Came From 4 as long i Chan.
You don’t leave the house anymore except for groceries.
Catch me if you cat o’ nine tails
a swallowed whale,
Nineveh won’t wait, it’s time to break bread with danger and death.

treating her sadly
in his dull pride admired

when his innocence, inoculated
with sour spores,
devolves into thick hides
jaded attitudes
and glazed gaze
raised in the house,
to only look in at the garden
via viewports distorted

Pull yourself up
never surrender
no pain no gain
get some

collapse
give up
stop the pain
leave it

crush it
win at all costs
may the best man win
no quit

loosen your grip
enjoy the journey
lose with grace
stop

destroy the day
seize the day
capture the victory
nothing is too much to give

relax
today
might be the last
day

you mean the world to me
cliché it may seem to be
but don't worry this isn't that same old poetry

maybe one day you wake up and realize this isn't the life you want to be living. like life is stopping all the things from happening.

maybe one day you wake up and think you aren't worthy. that no matter what you do you always end up weary.

maybe one day you feel like giving up, like the pain, the problems aint gonna stop. maybe one day you feel like you're not yourself, like an old book left on a shelf.

maybe one day you wake up and you feel like you don't matter, that every breath you take your broken pieces are even more broken—they're shattered.

maybe one day all the pain you burried inside suddenly come to you like waves. maybe one day, just one day, you'll feel lost. dont worry, you mean the world to me.