—YOU’RE NO ROMEO

History

She was trying to teach me how to kiss while I thought we were talking about water

An eagle hovered nearby stuck in the sky like a push pin

No one in the history of the world had ever died yet

She jerked the rivet free from its closed eye and kept searching

The river sloshed and gurgled like infants in a tub

I started to contemplate the idea of hunger how it turns you

The cedar beside us seemed uncertain like breath at an altar

I noticed a freckle on her earlobe winking at me

The mountains moved around us Musical Chairs or just restless nature

She whispered something I couldn’t make out and wasn’t meant to

There was a tornado far off like a tiny smudge or a sperm tucking its head down

Her palm turned oven-hot when it discovered something 

Two separate rocks hung atop the rushing water like sad buckteeth

My pulse bounced and ignored me altogether because I was young and stupid

I thought I saw otters fornicating in the tide though it was the sun playing tricks

Her hair was faded cotton candy the kind you might get sick over

Someone somewhere shoreside skipped a rock seven times setting a record

Her mouth tasted like a bowl of earth I was meant to be buried in

A deer showed up but just cocked its head as all deer do

I held my breath until it was blood meant to be donated to other people

She smiled at me as if she’d become a painting which she was

Later we named it love but never called it that to anyone who knew us

I saw her last at Union Station years afterward 

The crowd around us disintegrated like a rainbow the sky wants back because it’s jealous