Your words set me on fire

wake up and sleep to them

catch a bus with them on my fingertips

hold my hips firmly and kiss with them

all like a downpour of rain on my wet skin

breaking all the barriers from deep within.

It is a rush of sensations in all the right places

a blur of the faces

in front of me now.

It is how you are with me when we are together

and apart

that matters most

even when

at times I feel like a ghost

you can carry on like my host

until you open up my windowsill

and let yourself in

to cross your legs at my show

the way I bend, the way I glow

and you watch so closely I fear

that you will hate me and leave me

so I stand clear.

All my doubts piled up like laundry

all your songs inside my head’s playlist

pounding out anger with my tiny fist

letting out poems at red lights

producing thoughts like blinks

motivating strangers with cute invisible winks.

And the night it comes and goes

your melody, it grows in the Fall

you try so hard and I collapse

spin from exhaustion

dramatize my life,

examine the point of a knife.

It’s all in my head

and the stories come out in my bed

as I stare at the ceiling’s dull color

and mark my state as semi-dead

but then you arrive with a book

to steal my heart again and again

when you see me running and counting to ten.

I don’t even care what the book is

you just bring it to me

and that alone

is what sets me free.