Recovery

Afire - Rudy Francisco

I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak. And then suck my ex girlfriend's name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations. I'm going to be honest, I'm not really a love poet. In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp ... just to show me how painful love can be.

See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille. And my poems are never actually finished because true love in endless. I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she's air brushed; it's pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended. See I'm going to be honest, I'm not a love poet. But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem ... it would be about you.

About how I loved you the same way I learned how to ride a bike: scared. But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell me the story of how I fell for you. You see, I'm not really 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 like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you'll jump out of the page and be closer to me. Because if you were here, right now, I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don't even know the words to. Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific Ocean. I want to drink the sunlight in 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. You see, I'd write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink.

I swear I'm not a love poet. But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love, my first poem would be about you. And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me? And I said, put it like this: I want to be your ex boyfriend's stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like ... trust you.

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next 60 years of my life. And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer. If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat. 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 least my Etta James. I'll be oh child when you're in pain or you could 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.