25, Incoherent Love Poem

I'm surprised its taken me this long to post one of these. These used to be my speciality. One time, I wrote 30 love poems for one girl (hey there, jay-z) and posted them all over the glass walls of my high school. Two months in, and I am being careful not to let i love you drop. I am being careful with this one.



If All This Were Up to Me



Then this would be the last love poem I'd ever write.



I want this to be a manifesto of all that moves between us

(the slow stutter of your hips when you want something you can't have,

the way you stumble when I lean into you {the way you manage to catch me})

But we are in the pre-write phase and I'm afraid that what I want is the ninth edition paperback of us, dog eared and stained with mint tea.

I'm afraid that what we between have is barely even a first draft. This tenuous thing between us is as smudgable as the pencil marks

(you run the pad of your thumb along my eyelashes, and smudge black mascara)

I am interested to learn how you're going to hurt me.

Now we move around one another in highly choreographed waltzes, and I let you rest your hand on the small arch of my back,

but I want to know what I'm going to say that's going to make your face go hard and as private as a weekly appointment with a therapist.

I want to hear the comment that you're going to toss off that's going to leave me bawling uselessly into my unwashed pillow.

I am afraid to let you know that my insides run together with rot.

(maybe I am also afraid to see what you are made of)

Because biology was all blah blah enzymes and blah blah blah reactions until you taught me something about collarbones and the tangent curves of thighs.

You are the explanation I can understand, a religion I can believe in.

And champ, you ask me when we're laying in bed at nine on a butter and toast Sunday morning,

but I never told you this fantasy:

I think about grocery shopping for you a lot. I want to set up a joint checking account. I want tax returns and a pantry with your favorite brand of peanut butter and your laundry mixed with mine. I want to can tomatoes for you.

(I want everything+everywhere and I am learning how to deal with the fact that I can only have today.)

I think about walking in San Francisco and how someone's going to fucking regret it if they look at you the wrong way (it calms me to have something to protect) and

I'm terrified because we are children playing with a very adult form of fire and

I'm scared because sometimes I want to throw my whole body at you and I am still learning how much you can take of me.

I am scared because you make the noise in my spine drop dead.

I am scared because you are so beautiful you make the breath in my throat curl up and whimper

(I am scared because you tell me I am beautiful and I am still deciding whether I trust you).

You are the river I've been looking for, a religion I can believe in. Even your anger is as constant as the waterfall and I would pick your eyelashes over the Louvre. You love dogs. You want kids. You fit my bones.

The only thing left is charting out where my vast selfishness and your unchartable goodness will collide.

I swear, I'm ready.

Two months in. Wish me luck.