To build a life with you
To take all your bowls
And all my bowls
And figure out how they nest inside each other
Inside the kitchen cabinet that's a little too small
And if (when) a bowl breaks
dropped by a careless hand (probably mine)
Onto a distant floor
We will patch it together with band aids and kisses and say
"This is something we have built"
My neighbors have two black poodles
Hopping about in their high fenced yard
Is this what it means to love?
My love is not a bird trapped in the cage of your fingers
My love is not a patient record of each of the starts in the night sky
My love is a wilder thing then this
My love is a lion's hunger as it devours another living thing
My love is the sound of music over a car engine loud and late
My love is the pancakes I made and then compost last Sunday
Because I love to dream and I can let a bad thing go when I must
My friend Robin told me they want to build the wood and hope foundation of love
From the ground up, add walls and a roof
But I tire of square shapes
My love is a language, taken, not forgotten
My love is the language of smells, I know it as I breathe but I don't have the words
My love is the language of a baby: new, full of potential, and utterly meaningless
My love speaks and I take pause and then
I shout what I hear to anyone who will listen because to be known,
For just a moment, is beautiful
My love is the wind and it is infinitive and powerful and chaotic and with time
It moves mountains
When each word is an old friend
And the weight of you lies heavy in my hands
When each page is dark with edits
And stained with a catalogue of food
I ate while pouring over you
When your page numbers count heartbeats in time with my own
When I close my eyes and see lines of you printed across my eyelids
When I look down at you and say
Now you are complete.
Now you are whole
My roommate Leah's parents have a cat
Named Aunt Fanny.
Actually her full names is Frances Abbigail Billingsworth
But that seems like a large name for such a small and anxious cat
And Aunt Fanny is anxious
Like scared of people, furniture, and the wind.
Like scared of things that move and things that are still.
Like resting heart rate of 200.
Is that fast for a cat? Whatever cat's heart rates are, hers is faster.
Aunt Fanny is a rescue and they don't know exactly where she came from,
Or the sights her tired eyes have seen,
But they know how to love her now
She has three soft beds
And eats gourmet organic cat foods
That need to be refrigerated
She has more toys then I had as a kid and
She never gets kicked out of the house for vomiting
(Not that I was ever kicked out of the house for vomiting)
She has humans who keep her warm
And keep the coyotes out
Even if those humans
Did name her
Aunt Fanny
This morning I burnt my toast
And the world kept turning
If only I had thought to set a timer on my phone
Or pay more attention to the careful tics of the toaster
The toaster isn't loud but maybe if I had listened harder
This morning I made tea and everything went right
And the world kept turning
I boiled the water and I steeped the tea and it tasted of earl gray and a hint of honey
And it reminded me of my best friend in my freshman year of college
When we would sit on the fire escape and drink tea and pretend the city lights were stars
Tonight the moon came out and she smiled at me
She said I love the way you sway your hips when you dance
And I said I love you too
