we sit on your front porch
you’ve got a green sweater on
your face is like a perfect stone
flocks of doves falling
from your cigarette

you didn’t think your hands would remember to be soft for me
haven’t we been here before?
my fingers collect your hair
like baskets of cherry blossoms
for me you’ll shut your lungs off
float around the fixed point
of the first kiss

i am just myself with you
i found love lodged in the void again
but you are not a rocket launching
and i am not the galaxy
go easy on me
like the maple syrup in the morning
until my eyes feel sticky
i can trickle down smooth
you knit a smile into your teeth
and i want to break it loose
we can go slow
i’ll bite a compass into your lips
when it swells, you will not forget this
ours is a world of dim lights
my waist is just a shadow
you can chase
c’mon, it’s all right…

but we are sitting on your front porch
across the street from the barber shop
the sky is birdless
roses ripping themselves up behind your cheeks
your eyes are open and resigned
and you stutter when you speak.            

I’ve been dreaming of the day my hands blitz your hips
in a frantic, full-body quest for your lips.
You flutter and scramble beneath my fingertips
like doves gasping for breath,
for freedom.
We could be so free, free, free
We could be so free,
you and I.
You. Me.
We follow the flocks of lovers we’ve watched in old movies,
the lovers that never lived in the hearts of our parents.
They are ever-shifting, interchangeable,
patterns we never learned,
but still, we know
(sometimes you just know, you know?)
We’ve never touched but when you speak,
I hear your kiss, and it’s broken wing—
We could be so free, free, free
We could be anything.

Are you afraid, I wonder,
to believe in the power of feathers?
The ascension of a laugh, bubbling from her mouth,
for your ears alone?
I dream about burying whispers in your ears.
We could be so free, free, free
We could be— no matter where we are,
no matter where we’ve been— 
We could be here.

Unfold your eyes, my brilliant dove,
take a breath (take a nap)
and I swear, the sky
will still
be there. 

kiss me gently
like eyelashes brushing up against a rose—
kiss me like the orchards look at night.
kiss me the way you blow out birthday candles—
kiss me like my lips are your birthday wish.
kiss me like a lover.
kiss me like i was your best friend’s older brother.
kiss me like there’s sunlight in your spine.
kiss me like everything you’ve ever wanted is mine—
kiss me like you can have it,
all of it, if you just

kiss me like i was the last good thing.
kiss me with your mouth shaped like a wedding ring.
kiss me like the world was black and white
and to save the world, you had to
kiss me colorful and wild.
you had to kiss me like a child—
i am open, and yours, the moment you
kiss me like i’m paradise.
like i’m the water to your ice
like i’m giving you a solid reason to be there.

kiss me
like my jokes are funny.

kiss me like you’re sexy, and you know
it’s the only universal truth.
kiss me like the moonlight kisses the curves of your waist.
kiss me like you like the way i taste.
kiss me like your lips are covered in ink
and i’ve got paper-teeth,
baby,
find a way to write this down
your hands uncertain
eyes shut tightly
lips pressed together
like raindrops on the concrete.
stain these paper teeth.
find a way into this.

i know that we can do it,
we just have
to
you know—

It starts with me sitting in my bed,
a stack of broken bones,
counting my bruises, my cracks, and my wear and tear.
I’ve been flipping through too many magazines, pictures of women
that look like cheap cherry-flavored candy.
I’m just about to leave
when, suddenly,
I hear a knock at the door.
I click my bones back into place and open wide
to see you standing there,
in your sundress.
The one I told you was my favorite,
and I smile—
like a fault line.
Your image envelopes me like daylight
but when you walk into the room,
you are a solar eclipse in Ancient Egypt:
Absolutely devastating.
Tonight, you like when I’m corny like that.
You bring your hands to my face like a declaration, and I sense it.
You and I are coming to the edge, to the pencil tip, to the roses ever-trembling on the cliff of your lips—
I feel my toes curling underneath the weight of this just before I take the plunge
Girl, you are living, breathing proof that disorder increases in the universe.
My heart skips likes a five year-old  kid on a Pogo stick attempting Hop Scotch for the first time when you kiss me,
when you’re near me, as your mouth blooms to receive me—
We shed our clothes like we are burning, and my
half-digested-love-once-churning-too-large-to-be-released comes dripping
down my chest. Aristos, aristos, aristos—
The first time I heard
that that word meant ‘the best’ I knew
that a wordsmith long ago
had known what it meant to love you.
For one night, I am the whisper swallowed by your tide.
For one night
THIS night
you are angel-blue liquid sunshine
and I am your humble prism, chosen to filter the light—
You fall asleep in my arms. So deeply wrapped in dreams that all nearby alarm clocks
commit suicide,
because your minute-sized hand won’t separate from mine
This night? Defies time.
We are everything we seem.
We are so much more than the most.
We’re in love, or we’re something close—

but when the morning breaks the evening’s seams,
I remember.
You and I,
we got so close.
We were
only ever close
to aristos, aristos, aristos.

You can’t miss what you never had.

My eyelids crumble all around me, like ancient walls
that struggled to stand in the first place.
It has been so very nice to kiss you—
I dissolve into a dream.

————-

First, there was endless open space;
there you were,
brilliant and vibrant
against the infinite white
extending in all directions—
the world was radio static against
your symphony. I crackled and crunched
out of key
hoping you might hear me,
hear how hard I had been struggling to get through to you
but I was drowning, strangled by my own power lines—
White, white, white, white
making spirals around your body;
your eyes, like angel-blue sunshine,
dripping sweet fire drops in a circle ‘round my feet,
burnt me up and taught me to ascend on the plumes
of Lover’s smoke.

The ghost of something electric overtook you,
and you were swallowed by the white, white noise.
My heart ached like the ocean—
Only your sands could bring the swell.

————

Your softness drenched me. My toes, wrapped around the edge
of total ecstasy— To be intoxicated with your tenderness
was everything I had been too cautious to imagine—
The endless white space was infected with technicolor kisses,
the smiles I had never seen before, and your eyes
(God, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, your eyes)
clawing at my lips like a revelation.
Danika, bring me to your mouth and you will taste
the sweet serum of your breath, your delicate body electric—
You will taste what it means to cross the threshold,
to be one with the tide, the push and pull, the give and take,
hand to hand, my lips to yours—
If you look in my windows, I’ll unlock the door.

———— 

There’s a way you look at me sometimes;
it isn’t love, or lust, but a curiosity.  
It has been 5 years since I first loved you—
I wade through white space and impenetrable color,
relentless seas and deafening noise.
I can’t help but try to make you understand.
I can’t help but keep on going—
Like a hurricane that somehow
fell in love
with
the sand. 

I have to say, that

in my own little way,

I think I’m falling for you.

You make me want to take all my prickly pieces,
my sharp corners,
my rough edges,
and fold them back inside myself so nothing ugly from my heart could ever touch you. 
I am running hardstraighthrough the dark in search of softness so I can run right back
and plant cotton wishes like kisses into your very skin—
May you find warmth on the coldest morning, the one where the sun’s still gone,
the one where the blanket doesn’t quite cover your toes and
you are overly aware that you are tired
and alone—
May you know that there is a person
painstakingly picking out splinters from her spine
so that someday
you can feel the small of her back
and think to yourself, “Something this good is mine.”
So that someday you can look at your face in the mirror
and know there’s a reason I called you divine
the first time I saw you, really saw you,
sitting in a middle school desk,
making me a middle-school mess
in the worst but always the best of the best of
ways. I want the rest of your life to be comprised of
everything that was supposed to happen Someday. 

Yeah, I know. I’m getting serious again.
But I want you to remember everything I’ve said; 
it’s my first and last request.
In truth,
love never had anything to do with me:
It’s got everything to do with you.

When I was in 3rd grade, I learned my times tables. Other kids were learning 2’s by 3’s while I was learning my 9’s by 6’s. That’s the same as 6 by 9. Then, it was 69 is the same as 3 by 23. That’s double digit stuff. YEAH. I grasp concepts quickly. It didn’t take me long to group your flaws together and divide them by how beautiful you looked in the moonlight. I twisted your hair around my fingers like each strand was a remainder, trying to come up with something whole in my hand, but it never showed up. Someone had bent the rules. 69 didn’t mean 3 by 23— it meant a nervous breakdown in the bathroom when I took too long to come. Just because two females, such as you and I, do not have the so-called capacity to multiply does not mean we can’t create a new life with the person we love. A safe realm, somewhere far above all the wreckage, and the pain. One day, the thought that you may not be the one hit me like the dark side of the sun, like a late-night Calculus epiphany but you were too busy crunching our numbers to look up from your calculator. Must’ve done your math wrong. I learn quickly, and I accept my mistakes. I grasp concepts. I get it now— You’re beautiful, a perfect 10. But there will be numbers called after yours.