I.

i do not like to look
at pictures of you
when i am away

because that way
when i see you again
i remember that
you are sidewalk chalk
and i am asphalt
and you make me look like more fun
at recess

and the way you look at me
is not concrete
and the way you bless me with your breath
is religious
because like i told
you
God is everywhere
and God is in you

because there is no other way
that you could have so much
light shining through the
holes in your chest

and even though you study history and arguments
and i study words and people's insides
(and the way we can all play connect-the-dots
with the two)
you can still fill me up with static
and pour me out like a tea kettle

and i am sure
that when you are old
you will still be beautiful
because i can sometimes look at you
and understand how your deep smile-dimples
would make wonderful wrinkles

and last night
i was almost alone
and you were there
and i was dancing for the first time
(because don't you know
everything is new when it is with you)
and you held me close to you
and i breathed on your ears
and i watched the hair on your neck
and the way it fades out to nothing

and i thought about how it is nothing like you
because you never fade out to
nothing.


II.

you are a song that keeps on playing
like those singing birthday candles that everyone
pretends to hate but secretly loves

but i won't secretly love you.

in fact
i want to buy an ice cream truck
and ride around in it with a megaphone
and a picture of you
screaming

     "this is the greatest man to ever walk or be a poem and he is mine!"

and i want all people to know
that when you call to tell me you miss me
it makes my life stop for a second
and my stomach falls into my kneecaps
and my toes feel like they have cars and horses on them
and my hands can't stop moving
and everything i touch becomes infected with
static electricity

because you are an epic story
that has no end
and there are so many words for you
that even if i wrote them on a picket fence
that curled around the world
i still wouldn't have enough room to properly spell your name.

brackets cannot contain you
and metaphors will never do you justice
and sometimes i wonder why i even try to write you at all
but i know i have to try
because i can't even look at your mouth
without wanting to explode
and i have to put all that somewhere, you know.


III.

once i drove past the beach
and i saw two people in love and
i stared at them because it was summer
and i was tired
and alone
and i didn't even have any tan lines
and i crashed my car
because all i could see was their love
and not the SUV in front of me

and the point of all this is that
i would like to kiss your
back for a very long time
if you will let me
because you make me feel like i am
always in a sailboat and
i never want to be on dry land again

because honey
there is no part of your body
that i don't think is beautiful
and when i watch you get dressed
i want to be in church
kissing the priest
saying

      please give this thank you note
      to God because i don't think
      i have the correct postage but
      i have been looking for some inspiration
      and my deliverance has finally come

in the form of
soul nakedness
and bare music notes
and words that are spelled out
with mouth ink
in the form of the tapered silences
that appear when i want to say it
but i know the words will escape me

and i could talk forever
about tire swings and preschool romance and the way that ladder rungs are spaced perfectly
but i could never tell you the whole love-truth
or buy you enough daisies to tell you
how much your hip bones mean to me


IV.

and once i walked away from you
and i hoped you would come after me;
you didn't
but i like to believe
that if i had gone through one more doorway
you would have stood in your socks in the wet nighttime grass saying

     "the only place i will let you hitchhike
      is into my bed."

and then we would have fallen asleep under the moon,
our chests heaving with a mixture of contentment and salvation

and this is the longest poem i have ever written
but you are the longest poem i have ever known
so it is only appropriate
and just know that
i can read forever and
i still won't stop for a glass of water
or even to breathe
until i taste your
very
last
word.