“It was not song that taught me love / But it was love that taught me song.”

You wanted to be seen. I wanted to
be heard, so you pinned your right
ear to the right side of my left
breast and I filled my eyes with
the whole of you.

For the first three weeks we were
in love, you would yell “poet talk!”
giggling at every exaggerated sentiment
I’d used to romance you, but I could
tell from the way the corners of your
lips pushed away from one another that
you’d believed me.

You didn’t always believe me. There
were times when those same lips would
purse with disbelief when I would call
you beautiful, would feign
a smile only for the sake of showing
gratitude when I would tell you things like

“baby, I swear I had never understood
why people claimed to “fall” in love
until I kept tripping on my own two
feet every time you would flash that
heart wrenching smile at me”.

I swear, for every second you spend
believing you’re mediocre, I will
dedicate an hour of my life to
convincing you that you’re holy,
my lover;
because when you hold me,
every cell of my zealous body
screams out in prayer, breaks out in
shameless submission and reckless desire.

Would you believe me if I told you I had
never, ever aspired to belong to another
until the first time I laid eyes on you?

You, with your honey-dipped lips and hips
I would gladly lose every part of myself in;

you:

heart of gold and eyes like the sun come
up again;

my sun,
my sky,
my stars,
my moon, listen:

there are so few things that can change a
human heart, can alter its size and function,
can condition it to beat harder or faster
or softer or stronger, to beat at whatever
rate they see fit. I was never convinced
that love would fall under the category of
things that could accomplish this.

You’ve heard me say such ignorant things.

I think I said exactly this back when I was
trying to convince you I was a cold-hearted
cynic, that I didn’t believe love even existed,
that it was an
overvalued,
overrated,
pointless emotion I had no interest in,

think back to our very first conversation.

You said, “it hurts to fall in love with so
many things”.

I took that to heart.

I didn’t even know why back then.

But when you said, “it hurts to fall in love
with so many things”,

I took that to my heart.

And in sweet silence and unbound determination,
all the so many things inside of me lined up
for display,
and my harder, faster, softer heart and I,
we both agreed we would prove you wrong.