I am(b)

I love you is three syllables
But my heart beats only in two
So all I can offer you is the beat-thump of synonyms
DAR-ling
For I have watched empires fall over parchment
And would write essays to you on my skin
I’ll give you sun-light and ru-ins
And misshapen son-nets
And I’ll (love you, love you, love you) until the words have burned their way onto my lips
For I am woodsmoke and tempo and something entirely wrong
And I will make meter nine syllables, for you
(I love you I love you I love you) should really count as a poem
For I am tired of playing this game of heartbeats (inhale, exhale, I love you to the ink on my fingertips)
And all of this is not an attempt to force you onto me and the planets to align on our axis
It’s just that I think loving you is all my heart’s made for
I refuse to believe I wasn’t created with you in mind
And I would like my most human cadence of life to betray not only that I’m still breathing but to crescendo into your name
So i won’t tell you I love you (I do, I do, I do)
I will say Hell-o (and I think you are made of the soil)
And Goodbye (and won’t you linger with your hands on mine for just a moment longer
Because we are so very small and we will never meet the stars
And ants look at our kingdom of wishes and mourn their lost gods and the ocean laughs at our idiocy to think we rule the world)
And I want to kiss you with stardust and love you until you realize I am more ink than water and
I know you
will mean I love you
And my heart will sing of flower petals and your coffee order and that bump at the end of your nose
And none of this is in the sonnet I set out for it to be
So you’ll have to settle for my free verse conventions and
Hon-ey, dar-ling, sweet-heart (words I know already that sync to kisses and you pulse)
Count along, because I’m gonna take over the world in pentameter
But until then I promise to wake up every day and ignore the golden hour
And kiss you until our heartbeats sync up and none of this matters anyway

Author's Note

As always, longer than it needs to be. Haven’t posted anything on here in a while, but the style is similar if a little more refined.