2017
Instructions on Loving a Poet
It will start cautiously
because he is a menagerie contained by only his words.
Gentle, gentle, a tiptoe tumbling,
be careful what you touch;
every constellation you trace will breathe beneath your fingertips.
II.
His lips will burn your writer’s block:
weekly ballads will become daily, and
he’ll dance gold across syllables to you.
You will start to pay more attention to the rivets in your spine,
to the hollows of your pelvis;
you will trace his sloping jaw with the tip of your pen
and he will smile for you.
III.
Until your poems look more like him,
he will slip his fingers into the hem of your jeans, tug
on your belt loops,
bring you closer and closer and closer until
your jigsaw hips explode golden.
IV.
As he kisses you under a dripping sky,
you will wonder if you even existed before.
Still, he will remind you that before you are anyone else’s,
you are yours.
V.
When he leaves you,
his poems will stay in your closet,
folded up in a shoebox.
Let them gather stardust.