When a boy tells you he loves,
It’ll be the first time you hear this.
It is late and he isn’t even there to tell you this in person
But instead from a car ride home from a bar in Chicago;
He is there on business
And of course you will smile, because he sounds like he means it
Because you believe him
Because a boy has never handed those words to you
Like crushed blackberries in the palms of his hands
Firm, young, full
Waiting to taste sweet with you
His arms; creeping vines, begging to touch the sun in your face,
Saying “Here, take everything I have ever touched to be closer to you”
His breath, waiting to be folded into a love note passed in between the nape of your neck and his front teeth
He will remember the time you told him you felt safe in his mouth
And he will never grow hungry… just distant.
When a boy tells you he loves you,
You will hear music, the voice of your past lovers dancing up your throat;
Your stomach and after-hours cabaret still waiting on the last call.
That was when you learned that when a boy says “I love you”
He means I am getting ready to be inconsistent with you now
This boy will tell you that he loves you not long after he had you waiting for two hours in front of a cocktail lounge patience is something you were working on
But no,
Not for him
When he asks you to tell him that you love him back you will be in the car in the parking lot of a
Late night diner
You will watch the words fall into your lap like a spilled glass of white wine
You will remember the day your carrier pigeon heart got lost in the wind because that was a message it did not know how or where to carry
And one by one the boys have fallen as silently as the birds do
So eloquently they use to speak until I asked the questions that broke them into ghosts
That bled me into a corpse with so many questions of my own for the soil
But their