We watch a play where all of the actors on stage
are previous lovers.
I tie my hair tightly into a bun
and feel it as it comes undone,
it unfurls like a thousand birds spreading their wings
into the wind.
I have a dream that you are a bird
and that our love is like flight:
it spans the breadth of a bedroom.
I write a poem about caging and releasing you over and over again
just to make sure that you are mine,
but I write it by hand and my penmanship could never be as beautiful
as what I am trying to say and so I throw it away.
Sometimes I just want you to ask me how my day is going.
I won’t even reply because if I open my mouth a swarm of bees will come out,
the honey so thick you would never be able to hear
the resolve in my voice.
Viscous.
When I’m feeling frustrated I look up words in the thesaurus:
tenacious, thick, tough, mucilaginous.
We watch a play where all of the actors on stage pretend
that they are the only people left on Earth
and we start to believe them.
I grab your hand but it is not your hand
because you are not inside of there.
Tell me where you go when you are underneath me
and there is this smile dancing across your lips
as if you have found a stray thread
and have begun to unravel something.
Tell me that it is not me
that you are picking apart.