A Love Letter to State Boundaries

your body is a map that has no state borders, just endless space and time

connected by lines that I draw on your back with cold fingertips.

i don’t yet know the taste of your laughter mid-kiss or the shape of our

bodies bound together, but i can see the world.

they say that less than five percent of earth’s water has been explored but

you’ve shown me things deeper than the ocean floor and we are

weightless together.

we have drawn the atlas with our tongues,

whispered the secrets of the earth into each other’s mouths

and inhaled the entire ocean into our lungs, filling our insides with the

unknown. our separate bodies blend into one shade of blue never seen by

the eye of man.

they say that less than five percent of the earth’s water has been explored but

i think it’s exploring us.

you will write poems about me. about panning the sky for your favorite

constellations but only truly loving the stars you found in my eyes.

i think that you stopped looking.

i think you actually saw me as the moon.

you got used to seeing me every night.

you simply stopped caring about how each crater was formed.

and i know that you loved me most on nights when i was full.

and i know that you hate yourself for loving me less on nights when i was not.

and i know that you can’t shake the fact that you feel warmer in the sun

and i don’t blame you.

but i will come to you like nostalgia

a faint scent, a sweet sense of youth and wonder.

the tune stuck in your head that you never remember the words to.

lips desperately trying to remember the shapes of vowels like i and o

and u. sounds, but never words. meanings never understood.

the clock is broken, time stands still for us as i hold your hands and say

goodbye.