Tongue-Tied

The first thing I noticed about you was your mouth. Maybe I should not have told you that, but you are so cute that seeing you makes me feel like my own mouth is filled with both of my feet. Meanwhile, I appear to have magically grown a third foot, because we already seem to be getting off on the wrong one. It's just that seeing you makes me wish that I could cut the awkward out of my solar plexus and replace it with charm. Seeing you makes me wish that I could take the nervous in the hollow of my clavicle and turn it into suave. And talking to you makes me wish that I could take back what I just said, because I am pretty sure that I just complimented the curvature of your nose, and I am not sure how that happened. I just want to take this garbled string of sentences, tie it into a bow, and make it presentable, because you seem cool, and I want to go on an adventure with you. I want to literary-geek out over the precise placement of a comma with you. I want to try on sixteen pairs of sequin-covered parachute pants at a vintage store and not buy a single one of them with you. I want to have a really pretentious conversation about how the old Star Wars movies are infinitely better than the new ones with you. Also, I would really like to make heteronormativity do a double-take when I walk by with you. I want to make the fifty-year-old man on the bus who felt it necessary to tell me that he had an Asian fetish swallow his preconceived notions of what "queer" looks like and be jealous of you. I want to be the one who holds your hand even tighter when someone with the patriarchy on their tongue and a hollow Bible in their throat says that it is not okay for me to be with you. But most of all, I want to open my ribcage for you, because I will let you peel away the layers of my chest like an artichoke until you find the heart, because if you want it it is all yours. But before we can do any of that, it looks like I'm going to be standing here for a little while longer, trying to screw up the courage to go over to you and say, "Hi. You are so cute."