Discretionary Love

Nothing. Not even a look. Maybe a hand raised, to say goodbye. A distance that makes me be someone I hate. What do you do

In love speaks to hurt as it does to worth, in angles that extract and tend to leave lack. The ubiquity of words on the

Gone is my common sense, missing your face. Those pearly white teeth in a smile’s shape overtaking my thoughts. Am I a bad person? My

I tell her, it pays nothing, and the degrees are expensive, success may as well be stories you tell at campfires, and that even the

“I love this song,” I said. You said that You knew,     and that the chords made You want to take the streetcar at

I am done with dating apps. I would like to make you dinner: salmon, rice, brussels sprouts. You said you know what I want for

For heaven sake, our dear loyal friend A good husband but a boring one he’ll make He will court you chastely to the end So

I think of you on rainy nights, when cars use my street as a shortcut to I-90 E their steeled bodies slinging shadows, unfocusing the

Every thought of you makes me want to dig deep into the poetry that saved me I pull Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbury

                           on the second glance. No, not the first. That’s for fairy tales.