My favorite words are none of your business

But my favorite color might be the color of your eyes
I can’t tell from where I am how you are holding yourself because I
Can’t see through my pride

I’ve tried to write you down
But you elude me like a memory’s nightmare
Or the warmest of thunderstorms
So all I’ve drawn are empty semicircles on
White paper with
A number two pencil.

I’ve tried to play you, not with manipulation and trickery,
But with every instrument, rudely complex or rudimentary
Pieces of you have flown out of bells and through reeds
You have shaken me to my core with the strings of a cello
You have reverberated between my ears, intervals churned out of black and white chaos
But I am no maestro.

I catch you out of the corner of my eye everywhere I go
In train cars’ windows
Right under my eyes
Your hands and fingers and chest and

I wish I could talk with you
Our sincerities may habitate a common room
But when my words are aimed at your
vague, unrelenting presence,
They are dripping with fallacy

Only the passion of insanity,
The insanity of passion
Can drive the trickling stream between our minds
The reservoir is dammed and so are we
All that escapes is a minute and momentary flow
But we are fast to patch the concrete.

I know your body too well
I have explored the valleys of the small of your back
I have hiked up the crested peaks of your arms,
Only to find sunlit fields on top
The darkness made us giddy, as warm nights do
Sometimes limiting us to what we knew,
Sometimes encouraging adventure,
Sometimes opening wounds so plastered and deep we bleed all night
And in the morning all that’s left is a
Cold shower and rebandaging until next time
But that was summer
The fields are dotted with chilly development plans
An I-beam in the place of a nest
A foundation for a trunk
Even the mosquitos have found redder blood than yours

But I cannot fly so easily
There is no gaudy path to buzz down
Only a mirror and whisperings of motivation

We are not ok
And don’t tell me that we are
In your pantry you covet bottles of my soul
You mix and match ingredients
To make the recipe you want
But the Benedict has no sauce
And the egg is scrambled
Because that’s how you like it
That’s how it works for your mouth
Maybe it has infected and  tainted your tongue,
Now you mutter broken oaths and
Goals you know empty themselves before we’ve begun

The truth is that I’ll never love you.
You bring desert to my sea
But for this life we’re forced to run through
I am you and you are me.