I don’t want to write about you anymore

I don’t want you to think that you are as

essential to me as

periods and lowercase letters or that

the structure of my life will

break down and decompose and

cease to make sense because I need U

like A, E, and sometimes Y

 

You are a concept as misunderstood

as semicolons and

“What the hell does anachronism mean” and

“Why are poets so god damn sad”

but I push you onto people that don’t

believe in your allure like

you’re an Oxford comma and I’m

a lonely writer with too much paper

and beautiful words that look like you

at the tips of my fingers

 

I don’t want to write about you anymore because

the letters scramble and run together and

drip

from college-ruled lines and

when I look at you

I can’t form sentences, much less words

I look at you and all I see

is blue

 

You’re like spilled hazel eyes on a

vanilla canvas and the

cherry curve of your lips is

clawing at the walls of my weak stomach

I look at you and I’m overwhelmed with

the need to vomit up my

beating heart and hope the

lovesick purple hue will complement your

highlights and shadows

 

You’re like the most vibrant, messy palette

of an artist that had a dream but

that dream was too striking and intricate to

be copied down on paper and

he ripped

page

after page

after page

apart

because he couldn’t get

that freckle on your cheek in the right place

 

No combination of

pretty adjectives could ever

come close to the way your

hair falls across your face

I would rather watch it

spill across canvas like sunrays than

let it lie on paper in two dimensions

 

and I want your eyelashes to

dust over my skin like

one of those expensive paintbrushes that

I’m too poor and in love to buy because

every cent I have is spent on sketch paper

and cheap pencils

since your eyes change every day and

every fleck of green in that blue

needs to be documented

 

I want to hang you in a gallery and show everyone

“Look at this piece of art that I found.”

I want them all to see

incandescence

even in the dark

I want them to marvel

and wonder

and gawk

at how something like you

could have been made

 

I don’t want to write about you anymore

because you are not poetry

you are not a string of broken words

and metaphors that

one or few can understand

you are art