Hopelessly Romantic

It was you who, plucking a kerchief from your breast pocket,

Reached over your shoulder and buffed away the smudge on the glass wall,

And me who, seeing through for the first time to a heart gently beating,

Realized that I was a hopeless romantic

And my eyes fell upon you.

This was no cupid’s arrow,

No strike that had me stumbling in the direction of an unknown.

No, this was a swell of a turn of a page,

A set of encounters that arranged themselves in pleasing verse,

And though not canonized,

Captured my eyes, my moment, and my tenderness.

When I tell you of my fondness for you,

It had little to do with your actually feeling back
(Although in dreams you could not help but reach for my hand).

It's in my mind that I can always reach back, smile up at your face,

Imagine lips crafted for kissing, if only with fingertips,

And there you can consent.

So take these words, if you like, and scatter them in the air;

It's too late to go back—you cleaned the wall, and now I know what I am.

But take these words, put them next to your kerchief, against your chest,

And if your eyes fall upon me,

And if you let fade to silence all the reasons and doubts and laws and hows,
We can be hopelessly romantic
Together.

Indifference

How bad to make another person cry

Worse even still to make a person stop

When welling eyes have spilled and fallen dry

And once inviting doors are carefully locked

A trusting upturned face late full of smiles

A cornacopic heart so freely given

To take and leave in offhand manner vile

Light innocence besmirched until it dims

I watched you hold the babe and coo her name

I watched you come and go as well you pleased

Each time you left, her tears more cautiously came

Until your next return she didn’t need

            Be careful, if you think them always there
            A love eternal can succumb to wear