You laugh like a metaphor I've been trying to write down for years

I'd never tell you how felicitously

you make my heart do

a few somersaults every time you

show up at night. As much i want

to run into your arms and bury my

face in your chest, a part of me wants to retreat into my house to hide the red ink of embarrassment smudged all over my face.

And yet i can't help but think

that the sky folds itself a little

when you tilt your head back to

laugh, creases of moonlight slips

between your teeth, making me want to bottle

the sound and keep it on my bedside,

So that i can uncork it on nights,

and teach the moon to hum along.

Because every time you laugh,

I feel like a lost poem,

scribbled on the back of a napkin,

only halfway alive and yet somehow

you've turned it into something

I can never finish.

not because I don’t know how,

but because your laugh is the

end of every sentence I try to write.

I think those are the moments when

the stars swear that you belong

to the night more than I do.

Like you were written into its silence

long before I started sneaking out to meet it.

And every time I climb out through that window,

your eyes catch me like an unfinished

sentence like you already know

the next words before I can shape them.

I hate that you know.

I hate that you wait.

I hate that my hands shake when you reach

for them, as if they have learned the

language of your touch before

I allowed them to.

So stop showing up.

But no, don’t.

Or how else will I convince myself that

this feeling I can’t name,

this breath caught between

two beats of hesitation,

was nothing but poetry written under

my skin long before I gave words to it

credits

title - Rudy Francisco

image from pinterest

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