This is the first love poem I've written in a long time. In the tradition of most of my love poems, it is written for no one, or maybe just someone I haven't met yet.

Want

Knowing hunger makes the juicy burst
of tooth-ruptured fruit all the sweeter,
so this want makes this vision of you
all the more acute.

I want to touch your skin,
forget the science of dermis, epidermis,
follicle, muscle, nerve and remember it
like the last line of a poem, the camera's angle,
the sunrise after torrid summer night.

I'm still learning how
to deny consequence,
the uncertain rhythm of my flawed heart,
and listen to the steady thrum of need.

I want to memorize you like a favorite quote -
rediscover you in doubtful times, hang onto you
when night clusters sinister
in darkened corners, learn from you
through the years -
carry you with me,
ever present in mind, yet weightless.

I want to hang onto you like a dream of peace
so fragile that only the softest hands could carry you,
hold you like blood, perfect pressure permeating me
rushing through veins
never far from my heart.

These are things that cannot be said across
the furious clamor of the train car
during rush hour, when life is a soft focus blur
and the only sharp object is you.

They cannot be shouted
from passing cabs to sidewalks
when the streetlights catch you like a halo.

I want to whisper these words
into your ear as sleep takes you
so sibilant syllables follow you into dreams
and linger there, awaiting some future date
to spring from memory,
like a world you never knew
but always wanted to live inside.