Come To Me Asking For Love And I Will Lay You Down In The Forest Clearing Sun Through The Branches Slivers

I am surprised by the softness And the intimacy of this moment I had expected your skin to have Thickened and grown rough with time I am surprised by the way I remember The taste of your lips pressing on mine Taken aback by the way we fit together Again like easily memorized lines

There is a sweetness to the salt Of the sweat that forms at your sides A familiarity to the way you look Lying wanting beneath my body I had expected you to look older But the love in your eyes is just bolder Are you remembering the reason for rhyme?

I had not expected your kiss to claim Not expected any longing to still remain I had not expected you to still be mine I had only imagined you naked and true Covered from head to toe in our rain I have been pouring over you all this time But I had not expected you to still be mine

Kingdoms that we built Inside our neighboring, Rolling, hillside towns Still stand strong and Towering, but only in my Enchanted daydreams, the Night fell fast in yours

I write my own universe inside a snow globe Where fields of lilac and rows of holly Coexist without juxtaposition Where a mother is also a sister And a sister is someone I can trust Where truth and reality do not conflict With any of my own personal truths or realities

Shake me hard, turning me this way and that I am in flux, I am inside the water That from the outside looking in poses as air The winter birds and the summer birds Perch in the same trees, eat the same seeds I am dreaming here with eyes open Love does not perish here, not in my delicate orb

Let me revel in these Small doses of sadness In their warmth, In that quick, biting Shot before blurriness

I find myself a sponge In a hot bath, soaking, Letting sadness fill me Until I become heavy

But in the small doses Measured in spoonfuls, In small bites, I cozy up with sadness Carrying it in my body

I grip the windowsill too tightly As the dark clouds pour Heavily over an angry ocean Crashing, spraying, flooding Lightning strikes again, again! It's a storm, it's raging, and it's

Too loud! Too loud! Too loud!

Then you tap on my door You slip into my mind And everything else is on mute

This dreary morning January rain Falling onto icy snow Makes my eyes feel Heavy and tired

Roads caked with slush Cars splash through Brownish gray waves And I fall Down into the sludge

I sink like this month This month of melancholy I am crumbling Into these dirty waters Let me sleep in them

Let me sleep until This downpour lets up Until then I am fatigued These rains Beat me into submission

When I have swam too far And been lost in my emotion You have been the lighthouse That brought me out of the ocean

When I have flown too high Out of the atmosphere You have brought me back to earth And made me long to be here

I have never ran too far Or trekked alone in the snow The idea that I might miss you Has kept me safe you know

And when I have been too quiet When darkness filled my sky The image of your smiling face Has kept my guarded heart alive

What do they teach In beauty school? How to rearrange A dandelion to make it Worthy of being a flower?

Do you ask the waves To smooth the rocks Because they aren't Pretty enough for Social media pages?

Does a cloudy day Need a makeover? Do you wash trees? And how do you blow Dry them perfectly?

An artist can insert light into the world Reach into their own acid stomach Pulling out their intestines Shining, glowing, posing as hope Let me make it so Let me take my own guts in my hands Twist them and turn them Into a blue and red balloon animal Give it to our tired country The rotten thing does not fester Inside me today. Can I do it? I want to take pieces of myself That have atrophied and heal them Turn them into something resembling art

If I fall asleep now Will we pick up where we left Off in last night's dream? Lips finally locked In a desperate homecoming A desire, a longing Come to labored fruition

Maybe when I sleep I'll return to that Mountain where we folded Effortlessly into each other Where we dropped pretenses And indulged in a fantasy That left me on waking

If we can't exist In this humbling reality Then let me live in My dreaming with the Alternate us, the version Of ourselves that overcame All our worldly obstacles

If I fall asleep now Will you meet me there? Come out of your dream into Mine, let us talk, let us Speak our unspoken uncertainties Of our comforts and the truths We've held on our tongues

Meet me on the water Where we drifted on our backs Where an alternate us floated Contently in the forest lake Where a ripple effect kept us Closer together, meet me Where our dreams still collide