I am tracing vagary in the frost
your cold voice left against my window.
Like a hoarder, you are a pile of National Geographic magazines.
I'm staring at your naked ribs, unable to throw you away.

Love is like the physics required for time travel.
I may not understand the science behind it
but, I like the idea of going to the future with you.
I want my mouth on you in a flying DeLorean.

I know you're dizzy with infatuation, right now
Riding someone else's marry-go-round.
But, anyone can fall in love on the playground,
I do my lovemaking in the library.

Like hypodermic needles to shark skin
You will not let me pierce you.
I want, so badly, to bleed into your veins,
Hoping you feel the fervor that runs through me.

Wearing a simple tunic, slingshot in hand
I want to take down Philistine giants who defy our army of yearning.
I will hurl stones of young love
And leave all adversary Goliaths face down in the mud.

I'm addressing letters to you
as a way to keep record of how well I languish.
And maybe what I want isn't love,
but rather, relief from the sting you leave when you're withdrawn.

I know, we're all just trying to find the person we wish we were.
Sometimes, it takes an outside perspective to see what we're becoming.
I like the way you look at me with those salt water eyes –
Deep, blue, overflowing with contingency.

Like out-of-work models talking to handsome rich men,
I'm dripping wet and vain.
I'm not sure if I'm using you as a mirror or a lake,
But, regardless, I want to dive into you and watch how the water ripples.

You're the summer buzzed muse I was looking for
Eyes locked, I told you I wanted love and I meant it when I said it.
But, I say a lot of things.
Often times, I don't know what they mean.

Let's tear across suburban countrysides,
planting seeds in the front porch flowerpots of chance.
I will lay you against wet napkins and watch as your naked body grows on my windowsill,
stretching perfect limbs towards the light.

I want to be in love with you
or, at the very least, to feel less like a clock, dismantling.
Like scouts watching little leaguers with wicked jump shots,
I want to see the potential of it all.

So, for now, I'll keep writing down words in the shape of Colt revolvers
And wear them on my hip - locked, loaded, and ready to fire.
An echoing bang off the deserted city we once lived in.
The soft chant of ghost town denizens,

"I found you once. I will find you, again."

We are figure skaters on a summer lake,
taking Gold for drowning head over heels.
Love has always been a competition.

Your persona is radiant.
Your mind, electric.
I want to take magnets to you, draw you in,
and erase the heartache from your past.

I'll build you a sailboat made of bed sheets,
cut a hole in the roof and run vintage 35mm prints over the stars.
Then, dance with you every night on a sea of the classics.
Our laughter loud and bright like Technicolor.

Like antique phonographs,
I want to spin you in circles.
My nails running down your perfect grooves,
while you sing out Billie Holiday and truth.

If there is an honest love hiding somewhere,
I will risk deep water blackout dives
to shoals of any depth and bring that pearl to surface.
My sources say Sulu Archipelago is a good place to look.

On starry nights, when we're apart,
I pretend that the sky above me has been salted.
When I lick the night, I can taste your sweaty desire
And I like it. I want more.

I want your sweet and your sour in my mouth,
so our future will have an aroma that arouses all the senses.
Let me be the stamp on letters you never mail.
Your kiss on my neck, and your secrets safe within me.

Whisper sour nothings into my ear as we eat dessert in bed.
Let's dangle fruit over each other,
the world coated in our sugar glazed lust.
Our life together, delicious.

I am a book, unwritten.
You dipped a feather in red, opened me up, and wrote in my margins.
I've always felt more comfortable with a bloody sleeve.
Now, you're a character in the story.
The plot thickens.

I built bleachers from starry night skies.
Our dreams alive, making out and smacking gum.
You are the girl from a rock video that I hoped would play forever.
You dress the part so well.
We need more wind.

I'm dancing with my echoes.
Shouting from mountain-tops.
You were never one for yodeling,
but we held each other close.
Those times felt right.

Let me pick cocoa beans for you every morning
and dance with you every night.
During the day, let me take you on picnics.
There, we will friend ants who have forgotten how to carry chips.
They show up in business casual attire and only by invitation.

The mystery of why it isn't is my puzzle.
Did we lose a few pieces along the way?
Or were they never in the box?
Is our laughter not loud enough?
Are we framed, incomplete?

Let me bring over Blueberries for Sal
and cat nip for Atticus Finch.
For you – my heart,
Fertilized with diamond dust.
Cut me open, I want to bleed sparkle for you.

Your beauty is a magic sponge capsule.
It grows before my awestruck eyes
and makes me want to play with you in the tub.
I want to build a bubble bath and make soap beards,
while we wash away everything that's not now.

It hurts not having you,
Even if mostly, I can pretend.
In the future, I'll get better.
Just don't forget:
Once upon a time we shared a moment under the stars.

You will always make me smile.
All I've ever wanted is to make you do the same.

Give me a paintbrush stomped with grapes from the Champagne region of France
I want to paint the town red,
lay on a woven quilt of your miniature kisses
and watch our lives bubble up to space.

Peddling bicycles uphill through back alleys of the mind is exhausting.
Why must the gravitational pull of our thoughts keep us from jumping to the sky?
I fashioned a can with a string running to infinity. Listen.
What do you hear?

I want to go to a place where birds are Juilliard trained
and versed in romance languages.
On days with endless sunsets they karaoke Fréderic Chopin
and give private performances to lovers who dance in the clouds.

I want a house with no roof,
so we can lay in bed under the stars.
When it rains, we'll play slip 'n' slide.

I want my writing to sprout from the ground and bear fruit
so you can find nourishment in my words.
When I lick your sticky fingers, orchards will grow for miles
as you inspire me again and again and again.
Johnny Appleseed's got nothing on you.

I want to roll your laughter up and smoke it.
Waving my arms to fly when you smile at me,
I will exhale love letters against a clear blue sky.
You propel me to new heights.

I want theme music to play whenever I walk into a room.
I want Oompa Loompas to perform choreographed dances in formation as I walk.
I want the beach to find its way to me, so I can play house in a sand castle.
I will borrow sugar from starfish neighbors and bake you a cake.

I want mirror images of your paintings tattooed across my body.
This way I can revel in your creativity every time I see my reflection.
Swimming at the pool, I will be the finest art exhibit ever to do the breaststroke.

Let me serenade you with my air guitar.
This song's in the key of lust.
All album proceeds are donated to the clarity of your poise.

I want to download the sound of your breath
and bottle the taste of your sweat.
Cover my walls with the curves of your body
and I will never leave my room.

When distance puts itself between us, I unravel.
Pull at the yarn of my existence,
knit me into a scarf and wear me in the summer.
I want to be wrapped up, making you hot with passion.

Your afflicted demeanor is like a nostril full of stoned boogers.
Everyone’s rolling their eyes, hoping you’ll realize how much it blows.
You keep looking for the dispirit squad to throw a pity parade in your honor,
But the Mayor of Pensive Plaza just changed the stops on his vascular organ.
The jig is up.

Don’t you know there’s a Hispanic man who walks on water?
With a guacamole thumb up your ass shouting, “Rise up!”
Stop being scared. Jump overboard, find your footing, and cast a fucking net.
Only the chickens of the sea have their guts removed with a can opener.
Arriba!

For too long your sex drive has idled behind station wagons with their blinker on
Tell the next girl with a prurient look in her eyes
To hop up, strap in, and hang on,
Then rev your engine in the carpool lane of wantonness.
Vroom!

Stop feeling guilty for wanting to unlock new doors.
Just because you slide your key in something,
Doesn’t mean you have to call it home.
There’s a reason that hotel rooms don’t have knockers.
Unless you paid extra.

Don’t slump, waiting for concussed passersby to beg for resuscitation.
Stand tall like buildings in Dubai, spitting loose change from your mouth.
Bend down and blow blazing persistence into the lungs of a woman in black undergarments.
If she remains cold, drop her on a microwave turntable, and return when she’s ready to be cooked.
Not everything raw is a delicacy.

Do not travel with women from the lost and found who have never flown coach.
They carry too much baggage and usually belong to someone else.
Do not dress artificial trees up in tinsel, while flushed with eggnog, and call it love.
Just because something is shiny, doesn’t mean it’s real.
And you’re drunk.

The love you seek is wrapped up like birthday intestines
Already tucked inside you, absorbing salutary wishes and getting rid of all the crap.
So, stop worrying about making every meal one of substance.
Just know that too much eye candy and not enough nutrition will make your soul vomit.
Burp, when necessary.

People who rely on alien constituents for happiness are like over-hard eggs.
They’re spending their short lives screaming under the weight of a greasy spatula.
Go out and sing Sleepy Brown into the privates of the city.
And if you end up naked with a stranger, tell them they put the Oreo in your twisted Frosty.
Then cook ‘em breakfast.

You asked to sit in the smoking section of a Luby’s Cafeteria,
Then produced a cigarette with a five o’clock shadow and argued its health benefits.
I thought we’d come for banana pudding and Jello.
I stared, tasting secondhand smoke, then went out for air.

I erected blanket forts over each of my television sets without you.
Forever channel surfing,
I tried picking up digital channels with an analog receiver.
You were my converter box.

There is a place by the water where, silhouetted by city lights, we found each other.
It‘s now a courters’ cemetery in the television syndication business.
TV Guide tombstones read:
Can The Love Boat rise from the dead as Friends?

I burned every word we ever spoke onto rain forest scrolls
And rolled them out on super logger trucks to find perspective.
With scented markers I connected all the things you said to all the things I felt.
My credence, that once smelled sweet, tasted toxic.

I thought reticence would be a balloon between your gravitation and my thoughts,
But, like X-rated movies with the smut removed, fiction fills the gaps
And I long for more substance between our poorly executed dialogue.
It’s hard to deal with unreciprocated consideration.

I grab two coffee cups on torrential mornings
And sit in bed, pretending you’re swimming under the pathos.
When you fail to surface, I imbibe cold frenzy,
My mind racing with thoughts of misplaced focus.

Your bubble bath is sitting lonely in its bottle.
I use it to make Confucius beards
And ponder what that netty-blue-mesh-thing hanging on a string meant.
All I can remember is how good you look in soap stubble.

Should I take an eraser to all the writing in our margins?
Was I illiterate, reading the wrong words between the lines?
If we meant what we said back then? How can I unmean it, now?
Is your friend suggestion the writing on my Wall?

When I Googled how to remove your red wine from my white carpet
They said, “Blot the memory with paper and pen.”
Combine what actually happened with how you want to remember it in a bowl.
Sponge the stained area with nostalgia.
Blot dry with clean reverie.

For safe measure, I consulted a Rug Doctor who said,
“Our tapestries are harmed most by what we can’t see.”

Our past was never black and white,
Maybe our future is painted in complementary colors.
As for our now,
It’s hard to think of us as less than lovers on the fray.

When she called him, she was nearly in tears, her voice jettisoning between cracked frustration and a hopeless whimper. Why was it that the people and ideas she had invested so much time into had only resulted in dead-end paths? What was the point? Where was she supposed to go from here?

After she had exhausted her situation and talked it into the ground, he invited her over to his building. It was unseasonably cold out and a recent rain was now crystallizing over everything it had touched earlier in the day. He filled the backseat of his car with blankets, pillows, coloring books and crayons. In large silver thermoses, he poured piping hot chocolate—extra chocolate, extra marshmallows. Then, drove to the parking garage roof and left the heater running.

When she arrived, they embraced for a long time, his slow, deliberate breaths calming her, as they rode the dimly lit elevator to the roof. She tried voicing one of her many frustrations, but after staring deep into her eyes, showing he would listen forever if she needed him to, her worries seemed to melt away.

The two of them walked out onto the roof, the collected water now frozen solid. “What are we doing here?” She asked. His ideas, hopelessly romantic, he answered, “I thought we could dance.” And so, with the lights of the city skyline bouncing off the slick reflection of the ice, the two of them slid about, falling countless times, and attempted to do something, anything, that resembled dancing in some frame or fashion—each failed attempt beautiful.

When it got to be too cold—both of their cheeks red, breath hot on the other’s face—he grabbed her hand and they retreated into the hatchback of his car. Now, comfortably insulated with old quilts, pillows, and sheets sporting cartoon heroes, it was the perfect fort. A giant sleeping bag designed so they could be near each other—pouring cup after cup of hot cocoa.

He wanted to set up a white picket fence around his car and live in that moment forever, taking special note every time she smiled or laughed. She was beautiful when she smiled and he couldn’t help but find happiness in her joy.

Tomorrow she would go back to the other boy. Try and work out her problems with someone else. Make herself available for that perfect guy she just hadn’t, yet, found. But, tonight, there were kittens in capes to be colored blue and children’s books to be read aloud. Tonight, there was hot chocolate to drink and, oh yes, popcorn to be tossed into each others’ mouths. Tonight, she could tell him anything and he would listen, intently. He would love to hear her.

So, they stayed in the backseat of that car for as long as they could. Eyes locked. Inhibitions lost. And, in that moment, it was perfect.

I hoped that she was watching. I wished that for every shooting star I saw, she would see ten. Even if she was with him, I wanted her to smile, be content. I wanted everyone to see the the sky the way I saw it, everyone I’d ever known and even the people I didn’t know. I wanted us all to be looking up, glossy eyed on a cold night, warm from wine. All of us, looking up and being amazed and making wishes, expecting them to come true. All of our eyes wide, open and fixed above us, staring at the same sky and realizing we were a part of something, a part of everything.

And so each of them finished their spirits or wine, said a prayer and left the world as they had known it. Together, they would journey into the darkness, embracing uncertainty.