04 October, 2022
~~~

In another life, I would write a poem about your lipstick stain on my cigarette.
How, when you lit it for me, you left smudges of mulberry brown for me to taste — sweet, seductive, any romance reader's secret dream.
I would use silly smilies to describe the embers on the other end (fire....desire?)
Metaphorise cigarette and lipstick over and over again to weave a delicious l̶o̶v̶e̶  lust poem.

Maybe.

I don't know how it goes. This is not that life.

Here, now, I write about how, instead of reel songs, I have certain phrases you often use stuck in my head.
How you offer to pick the fishbones out for me, every damn time, though it makes your food grow cold.
How you dislike a certain season simply because of a sad short story you read eleven years ago.
In the poem I write in this life, you say you like my lipstick so I say come here, let me do the makeup for you.
Here, you offer me your shoulder in the most simplistic sense of providing comfort and not as an invitation for a wild (seriously?) night ahead.

This poem is about you in full glory,
Unafraid of being written.

In this poem, I have too many feelings to feel,
Too much love to love.

In this life, I write a poem not about your hand-sculpted silhouette,
But about you, with all the stage lights on.
In this poem I say I adore you
And no one, not even you, gets to shame me for it.