Your New Girlfriend Is Really Really Nice
I might as well tell you now,
While I have a breast plate of bravery
Covering my chest: I love you,
Like a naive child loves the sprinkler,
Like an insomniac loves woven darkness.
You are the dirty punctuation mark
I’ve been wanting to use without permission.
When I see you kiss her,
My arm hairs stand straight up;
Wafting like hands in church;
Sifting the air for some suicide song.
When she makes you laugh?
I crack open like a sinner on Sunday.
When you move into her, smoothe
Like soy milk pours,
Like the projects,
To say, ‘I like your hair, it’s beautiful’
I cut all mine off, tough & rigid
Like pumpkin patch vines.
Nostalgia, my only anaesthetic,
Prompted me to sign up for vanishing lessons.
If I ask you to meet me on a pier somewhere,
Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in your zip-up
Leather jacket and sweet tobacco smile,
Please don’t show.