Dear romantic etchings,



You taunt me in surnames,
karats attached with twine,
and flights of lust and fantasy.

I’d ask you to stop,
but love is a cloudy sea foam,
where the froth tickles my soles
into blind, devoted submission

and all I can think of, then,
is slow dancing across it,
as if it were tangible, real,
like the feelings I can’t diminish.

It must sound silly, or cliché
like one hit wonders
turned professors on puppy love,
but it’s so true, brutally so.

I pressed rewind every day,
the metaphorical mixtape
you handed me was lossless and eternal ,
some semblance of our maritime moment.

There’s no dream language this time, however,
no muffled confessions into my palms,
or silent wishes gone unanswered,
for an unrequited ever after,

just a loser, in writing
his deepest, dirtiest laundry
into blanched, white splinters



Your friend in waiting.