The scent of your hands splash onto mine—
never permanent but always consistent.
I now think of you every time I scratch my nose.

This morning the street lamps burnt out on my head.
I couldn’t hold your face captive and I thought you walked away. You didn’t.

It’s a minuscule trait in December, those streetlights burning.
My thoughts are being birthed behind my teeth but I can’t figure out what to say.

We’ve been sleeping through screaming war movies.
You traced an anarchy sign on my palm and I had to guess what it was.
I guessed wrong, like I always do especially when you’re strumming guitar on gray days.
I try not being one of those gray people listening too hard.

We retain eye contact until someone laughs.
The laughter, filling strangers’ ears with youth,
a trait they’ve been missing about themselves.

Our ideas clobber together, like newspaper and thick milk.
I want to throw stones in your suburban neighborhood.
You whisper, “No no, the people will get mad.”
So what? We’ll run away, stained bloody feet leaving tracks in the perfect grass.

I count the minutes and you sing the seconds.
Our scents press together upon dictionary pages,
a hundred words on a tiny little page,
indulging on meaning, chewing on sweet life
with bloody feet below and broken street lamps above.