!

She told me
that she was awkward.
Two left feet tied together
couldn’t find a rhythm to save
her life
and she wouldn’t be able to hit 
water even if she was sitting in a boat
and I smiled and

said “Now you’re
speaking my language,” 
because

this kid,
all tongue knots and
backed up pipes in the head.
one part shaky hands
and three parts
regretful comments
that I’d normally keep in my pocket
but I’ve run out of space which is exactly
what would

happen if they strapped you into a 
rocket ship, let you fly up and just
hang there
like an apostrophe

The stars would become dim
because they’re used to looking down
on us but now that a brighter being
is above them, the galaxy’s self-esteem
is in a decline of 
astronomical portions

But I wonder what would happen
if I could actually tell her these things
fragments,
run-on thoughts that go on for an indefinite
period.

-My- speech, I imagine, would, be riddled and, peppered
with -commas- and dashes

all pauses and trying to switch
predicates mid
stream

And my text bubble would be
gurgled and shrunken,
where the words are hunched over
like the question mark at the end
of this
because of all the
uncertainty I think I have
I think?

But in all honesty,
I need to take these
unstable and trembling hands
Steady these suckers
and unfurl the question marks
of my speech into straight and defined
points of exclamation! 

Start learning to see the bold
statements pluming from your mouth
and try to look at the curves of your cursive
floating in the air

Let me tattoo quotes
onto my forearms so when I
hug you, I can enclose your body
within quotation marks
since you are all I want to talk about

Keep talking, keep talking, keep talking
so I can watch your lips curl into parentheticals
and you can tell me the things you’d
only trust to your
closest

editor. Give me your insecurities
and I’ll teach them a thing
or two about
line breaking and enjambment. Show
them that even the shattered things
are still pretty. Sometimes even more so.

I’ll tie an asterisk to the ceiling
of your mouth so with everything you speak
I can reach to the back of your mind
to where those annotations live.
Talk me through your process.

Dear lord, just talk me through
anything!
The hard to decipher
instruction manuals of this world
so desperately need a lovely narrator.

I’ll write you a letter every
day. I’ll start with A 
but get stuck at U
I’ll pen about
the sea and the crescent moon when I get 
to day three and before on day two
I’ll foreshadow my future letters by writing
“Boo”

Because on day nine, you’ll find
that I is an illusion, a ghost of sorts.
A phantom ellipsis that always slips into
the end of days because I’ll always
have something to say…

Even if I don’t always finish.

And I wish I could finish these sentences
like meals
To shed these brackets like jackets so
I would never have to over explain in an awkward
fashion what I actually mean
when I try to tell you that sleep is no longer
for dreams ever since you walked into this scene
you unprecedented syntax of passion

I mean,
GODDAMN.
You make me feel things!