a strong sense oftenderness

plum flower come fal l ing off the tree for me

there is a river underneath us and we are

being taken somewhere unfamil iar

feel the water soak into your back

plum flower we are meshed together

fingers by fingers hands by hands bodies

by bodies our

bell ies are touching and our faces are

blushing red

plum flower i am kissing you under the roof

of a building i am kissing you in a thousand

fields i am kissing you like a hundred soft

petals of the wildflowers

can you feel the hundred soft petals

because under this roof of this building you

are kissing me like a thousand more

drowning very quietly in the reflecting pool of

the washington monument under the moon

the secret service fishes me out with a giant

pool net

what are you doing, they ask

i am spitting out gross reflecting pool water

and walking away

wait, they yell

in the instant before i am tackled to the

ground by three members of the secret

service i am remembering the curves of your

si lhouette

thinking i am going home

turn on your side and kiss me in the morning

your l ips are soft and gentle, i am dissolving

in the arms of you i wil l write my constitution and in

the arms of you i wil l fal l to pieces and rebuild

i am putting dry shampoo in my hair and the l ight is

streaming anxious through the window

you are laying on the bed with your shirt on your lap

reading words aloud to me

i could l ive l ike this, i think

i could be happy living l ike this, i think

we wil l walk beside the canal in springtime and stand

on the bridge and point out the shopping carts under

the glassy surface of the water

the tips of the leafless trees are reaching up and

slowly budding and i feel l ike i am a fractal among

them in the clouds

the birds are back and making sounds in the

morning with their beaks open

at noon the bells at the church down the street ring

and i feel the ghost of you beside me

the new leaves on the trees are waxy green and

soft and the grey sky is cal l ing

rol l me under a wave in the place

where it crashes and let my hair be ful l

of sand and let my hands and feet get

pruny and make me taste l ike salt

put seaweed in my mouth put hermit

crabs on my stomach and legs put a

single huge spiney starfish on the

space between my clavicles

i love you with the fury of an ocean in

a hurricane i love you with the

sweetness of lapping waves at your

feet and i promise

with al l these parts of the sea on me

and in me

i wil l never let you drown

i love you so much i would

bring you six peeled

tangerines to eat in bed

don't ask because of course

there is room for you in me

my ribs are hollow, my chest

is empty, come fi l l me up

we are two doves

nesting in a hollow

tree somewhere in

barcelona, spain

the sun comes down like a shaft of l ight into my room and i

reach for you but only get the phantom feeling of your body like

a limb has been removed but the brain sti l l recognizes the

place where it's been

come back to me and make me bread pudding for breakfast

come back and drool on my pil lows and snore in the night

help me be whole again

i t seemed like al l the leaves on all the trees

unfurled simultaneously and it seemed like

the seasons fel l over each other faster than i

expected and it seemed like

walking to the grocery store

every person i passed could be you

i can look at my reflection in a glass

storefront and see myself and quickly

fleetingly see you behind me before your

ghost is gone

my leaves are unfurl ing much more slowly

than the trees' but i wil l bloom when i am with

you

standing on a platform over a river where the bank on the left

had caved in way much into a cliff i wanted to kiss you because

i am afraid of heights and you took my hand gently and led me

out over thin air and with your hand in mine i was not afraid

anymore

later we would hold hands in the car driving back to your house

i would wish to myself that it would rain, because it seemed

appropriate

it wouldnt but we would get to your house safely and bring

everything out of the trunk and fal l heavy on the bed

so soft and so warm i am caught up

in you and the joints of your body

continual ly amazed that part a slots

into part b so delicately so cleanly

you beautiful machine

i want to cradle you and comfort you

and put our softnesses together

your heart beats l ike a small bird's

heart would beat, sometimes

your hands are smaller than mine

and the tendons rise when you move

your fingers

melt completely into me i want to

melt completely into you, for days, no

feeling but body warmth and a

weightless floating and your skin on

my skin

i wil l bite into a pear and the juice wil l

fal l sticky on your stomach

i could meet you at night on a

bench and eat strawberry yogurt

and laugh about it later and i could

show up to your house with a ful l

pot of warm soup and i could help

you move in to your new apartment

and carry the heavy dresser up the

stairs and get stuck in the weird

curve at the top of the stairs and

need you to help me canti lever the

dresser off of my foot and i could

go to parties with you and drink too

much and fal l asleep on the couch

in your new house

i want to be alive with you in every

sense of the word i want to

experience what you experience

and i want to make you food when

you are sick i want to pul l you into

an alley on our way home and kiss

you for the first time ever with the

early winter snow starting to fal l

wetly on our hair and our hands

cold in our pockets

you

me

this is dumb im listening to a

tracy chapman song and im

gettin those feelings u know

the ones

the ones where youre l ike

almost ok with crying but since

its because ure l istening to a

tracy chapman song u dont

want to let the floodgates open

since it seems kinda contrived

sti l l

there is an empty space next

to me where you should be

and maybe i do have a reason

to cry to a tracy chapman

song even though it is a l ittle

cheesy

i would go to disney world with you and i mean it

and that is the most sincere presentation of my

affection i can muster because going to disney world

as not a seven year old becomes sort of a hell ish

experience unless you do the drink around the world

at epcot thing but i wouldn't do that with you

because i'd be too busy holding your hand and

probably crushing some of the bones while

screaming very shri l ly on that one ride with the

animatronic yeti where you go backwards for a while

and i guess what i 'm saying here is that i would put

myself through walking around a lot of children and

their parents and overpriced snacks and being

bombarded by disney propaganda for you

can we go to the water parks though typhoon lagoon

has this awesome tube ride it would be so much fun

get me a shirt with a photo of you sitting on a lawn

chair on it but make the photo real small and

under the photo i want to have the shirt say in

bedazzled letters

SUPERSTAR

i wil l wear this shirt to every formal occasion and

you wil l get real ly flustered by it and i won't stop

because i feel the world needs to know you are

excellent always

somehow i keep thinking "i am

in love" and it feels good in a way that

is unique to the feeling l ike the

taste of kiwi fruit, somewhat

astringent

im eating pineapple rounds right out of the

can and my fingers are sticky but im wiping

them on my jeans

you are out there in the world

you are breathing and moving and sleeping

and eating baked beans and talking to your

mother over the phone

your existence makes me want to supernova

into some beautiful explosion thousands of

l ightyears away

it is hard not to l ike this l ife when you are

also in it

this was going to be all about

drake initial ly but it turns out i

love you more than i love drake

because even though you are

not a successful rapper with

many top forty hits you are closer

to me and did not act on

degrassi

that is worth more to me than

being a successful rapper who

has a lot of feel ings and conveys

them through raps

that one come on we're going

home song is real ly good though