Repurposed 12.7.21. I wrote quite a few love poems in 2021. Many of them weren’t shareable, but some lines I really liked. So I pulled out the good lines, reshaped it, and rewrote it into this. This is the last of the “rocky mountain love” poems. Cross-posted to IG.

---

I think of you, and the sweetness, the lushness of
speaking with you, and I want to swallow the moon whole.

If I could, I’d write you a love song;
I’d write you letters; I’d court you
with words; I’d comb out your hair,
rub sweet lotions into your skin,
and fold my letters to make you
whatever you wished: a crown, a ring,
a cape as soft as night.

Because you are so very tempting,
and your texts have my heart shining so brightly,
like the moon after their slumber, pulling at my heart
strings, leaving me spinning daydreams of you wringing
every sound I can make, until I am
lost beneath your hands, beneath waters still and deep
until you steal all the words from my mouth and the thoughts from
my ever-spinning mind, because
even my skill with words, bows before your tidal pull
until I am focused just on you
and the way my body lights up like lightning in a storm.

And in that stillness, listen: do I want
you, hands held beneath the covers,
or my fingers inside of you,
do I want the comfort of you in my mouth
like hard candy?

I, I wanna love you like this:
so dearly, as gently as when
a butterfly lands on you,
as fiercely as the sun loves
your skin.

When I don’t know what fantasies to spin,
the easiest ones are these:
our hands linked,
pressed against the bed,
fingernails against scalp,
you holding my hand as
you learn to walk in heels,
me leaning through my fear of falling
and balancing on the handlebars of
your bike.

Written 2.20.21. part of the “rocky mountain love” poems. Previous poem here. There’s a direct reference to Mystic’s Neptune’s Jewels. I have one more poem in this series, maybe. Cross-posted to IG.

---

I record my voice, and send it across
the 1,000 km between you and I,
made short by the internet as a
tesseract, folding space and chance,
so that you and I get to cross paths
and do our best, to hold fast to
one another’s hands.

you and I have made our
texted vows: how you want
my hands in your hair, and how I
want you in my bed to fall asleep
beside. I cannot bridge the time
it takes for vaccines and border
crossings, so I hope my voice
is a light beckoning you to shore,
a promise of homecoming,
a warm blanket and all the
promises of domesticity I want to make
but think it’s far too soon for.

tell me you feel the same,
tell me you will make the same vows,
that when you’re alone with your thoughts,
I am the kind of person you wished for,
and I will show you all the nightly pages
I wrote, imagining you.

I don’t know how to swim,
but I got that moon in 12th house scorpio shit,
so say the word, and I will dive deep with you,
for you. If mystic would dive to bring you neptune’s jewels,
I would dive deep to bring you the treasures from the bottom of our hearts,
and exchange vows written in starlight and rivers, until distance
and time and pandemics is just a story we tell ourselves, laughing
man, remember how we met? because
our ancestors have conspired, and here we are
side by side, in love, in full color,
in full bloom.

Written 2.21.21, but finished the last stanza Nov 2021. There’s also one or two more poems in this series, which I jokingly call “I was ghosted and all I got was some dope poetry.” Working series title is “rocky mountain love.” The closing lines are a riff on Tina Turner’s River Deep, Mountain High. Cross-posted to IG.

---

I call you my land-crossed love –
we share the same shoreline,
pacific ocean waves caress our curves;
and we are also separated by 1,000 miles,
1,600 km, another border we cross.

If we weren’t separated by the cascade of mountain ranges,
a spinal column I long to climb with fingertips and tongue,
I’d say you were too good to be true: the kind of person
I longed for as I fell asleep, as I tore through cartridges of ink
writing in my diary, This is what I want, teasing out each side
of desire, like some kind of ten-sided die; pursuing what
makes me sigh with the same devotion I once gave to finding
what part of my mouth made my ex fist his hand in my hair
and call me his for the night.

I learned I did not do casual well, once my summer fling
became a four year affair that persisted long after I knew
he and I were not right for each other. So perhaps it’s just as well
that you and I are so far-flung, because I’d be tempted to
give you all of myself, go deep-sea diving without any safeties,
without first learning if my devotion was a gift
you’d handle with all the care, reverence, and awe I deserve.

I don’t know yet what will grow, but as we talk
of you driving the pacific coast to greet me,
driving together to peer down the grand canyon,
how you want my hands in your hair, not for sex,
but just for the comfort of touch; when the fucking
adorable gifs you send are studded with some kind of
wonderfully clear declaration; when you tell me you
can give me what I’ve always wanted: touch,
plentiful, freely given, so much I’ll never wonder if
I’ll go without again, I find myself thinking
that even though the future is so uncertain,
and I’ve never done a long-distance relationship,
that I am going to love you so deeply, so surely.

But for now, you slumber beneath
clear skies, in a cabin in the mountains,
just as my tarot cards told me when all I had was
a wish; and I am beneath the same starlight,
in a house at the other end of the cascade,
holding this small love in my hand, like a flame,
a dream waiting to burst into full bloom,
a lighthouse bright enough to call you here to me,
and sure enough to burn as long as it takes
for you to cross a thousand miles. And when at last
you place your hand in mine, oh,
ocean deep and mountain high,
oh how mightily I will love you.