just a story

first it was your eyes:
my same hue but bolder,
shaped like up-turned
raindrops (gravity eludes you).

second was your hair:
waving like a leaf on top
of a quiet bobbing lake.

I happen to know there’s a
model in this room. I happen
to know pictures exist of her
that make her the size of the
sky and just as inescapable.

you are a daisy.
            my dad kills daisies,
            says they’re a weed,
but you are my daisy.

third was your mouth:
(only when I allow myself to look at it).

fourth was your poetry, 
which made me hope that
after class you’d wait
behind a concrete pillar 
to take me upstairs,
tell me why you worry 
and let me kiss your forehead. 

your name is the meaning of mine
your name is the meaning of mine!
I love you and I don’t know you!

more than divine, complicated 
lyrical odes, more than
average human beings 
or the tyranny and 
oppression of late,
you have my pen scribbling, 
careening through the page 
longer than poverty and 
injustice wills it. longer 
than the voices in my head 
command it! 

please tell me you were there
beside the lake that night in
the town of red and white,
tell me you were in the orange 
streetlight, the summer star. 

I see you reading this. 
your forehead wrinkles. 
it does that when you read 
poetry that’s like a riddle.
I hope your brow is knit,
looking down on me here.

fifth was your handwriting.
I thought it was mine. 

I think you must know something
of automobiles 
or alcoholism
or the band Queen. 

I remember when I worried
you thought I was a nazi.
I hear you in the Mediterranean 
Sun Dance, I see you in my
own reflection. 

I happen to know there is 
a model in this room,
but you are my daisy. 
my dad kills daisies,
says they're a weed. 

the smart one knows 
everything is not a metaphor. 

sixth was your name.