The Adorable One, pt. ii

The Adorable One, pt. II

You take Mark Strand’s advice and spritz yourself
in lavender. Wearing an ink cloak dress in springtime,
you frolic over pavement fields to my little house
to place itemized complaints about the shape of my smile
and the wispy weeds I gave you which look like
your grandpa's hair on fishing trips in Michigan. You place them
in my redflagged mailbox like once-heard Beatles rarities.


Your bangs, however, hang down, drenched shower curtains
after an ice storm. You wish I would talk about you more lyrically,
more elegiacally like Saint John’s church bells after matins.
Three stout cups of coffee later, I have finally skimmed through
your manifesto on the words you plan to eradicate from
the cracks of my vocabulary and, I vowed silence to show


I agree. Beauty is too subjective, pretty too plain, and love
too abstract. Only four year olds holding each other atop
monkey bars while throwing pebbles onto occupied
hopscotch courts come close to understanding it. Instead:


I propose we live like mutes at Wahala beach. We gesture
with our eyebrows and lick the outside of skipping stones to
show appreciation for one another. We confine our diction
to a toddler’s thesaurus and never use a phrase we could find
in our rewritten history books. The redcoats have won,


and the Velvet Revolution spread to my house. We are visionaries
without foresight who gaze into each others eyes like hazy crystal
balls. We can explain why every Saturday night we drink cheap
shiraz only when our tongues have talked a country mile. If I sacrifice
birthday wishes so that we live in actions, you write “Then show it.”

My hands are lazy grass stalks and only
the wind will move me closer to you,
although (it is true) your sighs have force.