Ill and Loose
Location
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.