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.