socially awkward.

Light touches the wooden floor of my foyer
like you touch me, not the other way around.

When I close my eyes and think of you,
I think of how small you make me feel
when we’re holding each other like we’re
sleeping steady in a silverware drawer.

Your hands are like these poinsettia petals
and I still don’t know how to write you this poem.

— O, only the desperate stay up this late; alone.
January; the moon is moving farther away by the hour
and it’s tied hearts around its tail like wedding cans.
The year has been consummated and the new moon is
paving a road for another year and I can’t help but
wonder if this will be our last.

I’m reading a book that translates directly into the scent of honeysuckles.
It takes me to that night, post-rain, in the summertime,
when moonlight spilled out from streetlight jugs and I wished
that you’d kissed me goodnight.

I still wonder why you didn’t. I still wonder why I didn’t.

There are certain things I’m truing to understand
like why my heart lurches at the end of every poem and why
my heart lurches at the end of every kiss,
but I’m starting to think that they’re made up of the same things.

I’m replicating your touch and making a list of all the reasons
why I like your hands better than all the others but all I can
get to is “You’re beautiful and I’m falling for your knuckles.”

I’m new to all of this. Still unsure of what temperature our skin
creates when we’re sitting on a fallen log and you’re blowing
smoke rings out from behind my ear,

still unsure of what to do when we lay besides each other and
our limbs are having conversations of their own while we
lay silently watching black and white films.

These are smaller than poems and they have
been written by hundreds before me and a hundred more
will tell you the same thing, but I hope you know that
when I ask you where you’ve been in this world,
what I really mean is if you’d like to see it all
with me.