I’m not much of a love poet. But if I woke up tomorrow morning and decided I really wanted to write about love, my first poem would be about you. About how I love you the same way i learned how to ride a bike. Scared… but breathless. With no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.

I’m not much of a love poet. But if I was, I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window. You see I’ve written a million poems hoping that somehow you’d jump out of the pages and be closer to me because if you were here. Right now. I’d massage your back so your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to. Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name. And your smile, like the pacific ocean, I want to drink the sunlight from your skin.

If I was a love poet I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful even on days when everything around you is ugly. I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink. If I was a love poet I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture every time I hear the vibration in your voice. So whenever I see your name on the caller ID, my heart plays hopscotch inside of my chest and it climbs onto my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again.

I know this sounds strange, but every now and then, I pray to God that he turns you back into one of my ribs just so I never have to spend an entire day without you.

And I swear I’m not a love poet. But if I was, my first poem would be about you. And after all of that, she was like, “So how do you feel about me?” I said, “Let’s put it like this. I want to be your ex-boyfriend’s stunt man. I wanna do everything he never had the courage to do. Like.. trust you.”

I swear that when our lips touch,I can taste the next sixty years of my life.

And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just (so) you can be part of me a bit longer. If I could, I would sample your smile, and then I would let my heartbeat do the bass line. We would create the greatest love song of all time. Whenever we stand next to each other-
love, I was the only one made for you,
and you-
can be at last, my Etta James.
I’ll be all child when you’re in pain. Or you can be candy-coated drops of rain even though it never rains in Southern California. And together,
we could be music. And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend,
I’ll say, NO.
She is my musician.
And me…

I’m her favorite song.”