When I met you

This is not the first time I’ll talk about the first time I saw you.

But really, the first time I saw you,

I just wanted to run to you and pour my name into your hands.

That’s how I imagined you holding me the first time.

When I met you,

I knew, almost immediately,

You were somebody my heart could shelter for free, without rent.

So I prepared my heart for you.

But you went for my lungs.

On our second date,

You asked me to surrender my breathing pattern to you .

That is how you landed my body as your colony.

That night, you kissed me on my cheek, planted your lipstick as a flag,

The cab driver was a witness,

I did not resist your rule,

I gave you the throne to my air.

For the next days we talked on the phone,

I opened up to you like a borehole,

You did not do the digging,

I dug into myself until I was a body of water aching to pour myself on you.

And I liked being water,

Your past was full of heat,

Mine was frozen water,

So it was cool to be ice around you .

And I remember the warnings, everything you warned me about yourself .

I remember you warning me ‘I’m difficult’ and I remember thinking okay, but loving you is easy.

I remember how I kept falling for you,

It was a scary fall.

I wanted to tell you,

I need kneepads and a helmet for the way I’m crushing on you.

I mean you don’t understand,

I’ve always told people around me that I’m not a ‘texter’

but I texted you,

when I woke up, when I ate, when I was about to shower, when I didn’t shower.

I never wanted to let you go.

Especially not on a phone call.

You can call them wireless phones but I felt strings attached to our conversations.

I remember when you were around.

Every time we wanted to see each other, nothing could stop us.

Not even a Sunday, not even a Monday,

I was ready to learn how to hold your hand on a Tuesday and call it a school day.

But look at us now.

I keep talking about yesterday because all we have is a past now.

What we started on a January,

Couldn’t amount to March,

We ended it on a February.