Ill and Loose

I can’t remember what time it was when I met you

But I can remember the bus rattling past corn fields as I used my last good piece

of paper to write a metaphor about every sunset planned for you and me as the

audience.

Sometimes I try to use English to tell

you what you mean to me and when I get it right, you hold the match to my

chest and then there’s a glow in my beating heart, a cage is introduced to a

rusty key, feathers drift.

When I get it wrong, when the arrow

doesn’t quite make the target, the backs of your fingers flow to my hand, to the

pen, and we can escape words for a while.

There’s no shame in asking for love.

I don’t complain about how I just

finished making the bed.

I’m your shameless, shy, adoring fawning

girl and you are an opened box of things that were too good for this world.

And all I wanted was for you to kiss me like you’ve just swallowed a paper sack

of love poems and the only way you can recite them is by pressing your hushed

lips to your lover’s, keeping the best and sweetest lines on the roof of your skull.