I was made with a paper towel heart.
This is why my chest gets heavy when you cry on it,
and then lights up again when you squeze me.
It makes me feel useful when you are dirty.
Emotional nose bleeds beg my insides to be a damn
soggy and maroon
keeping you from swallowing penny flavored buggery blood.
This is also I think, why I have a tendency to spill on myself,
my ribs begging to be seeped through
and why I am attracted to precious messes like you.
Your freshman year in college
weak kneed my way up to your dorm room
butterfly gutted out small talk until
my hands caterpillars there way across a dirty denim sofa
and we cocooned for hours after a rusty jaw hinge swore
"just friends"
I am not only programmed to be brave
but stupid too,
this means
we have had hot hair pulling
passionate clumsy sex in your parents closet.
This also means,
I am not affraid to climb the big tree in my neighbors yard to get my voice box back
after the sound of your breath
pumping through a phone line thousands of miles away
hits me like a moth winged hurrucane
given the time and distance
builds momentum that blows through big talk confidence
like windows boarded up with silly putty
Im hiding in the basement.
Please be gentle when your big kid strom hands
tear apart my brown paper bag guts
and scatter their contents down the street.
When you asked me if I ever wrote a poem about you,
I lied,
but then
I wrote this
And finally, last week
when life had us pulled apart like opposing ends of a slinky
begging to be recoiled
hoping the spring hadnt been stretched out of our childrens toy romance.
I let you get just about 7 steps mid street
before I realized what a shitty "good bye" we would have had
if you were,
in that moment,
hit by a car.
Run after you
feet meating between double yellow lines
I couldnt pass
computer chipped tooth kissed you
moments to fast for processing
I freeze up in nervous giggles and hick ups
this years model refusing to become obsolete.
The man in me makes omre sense than the machine