Our Love, Created in The Image of The Hetero Male

When I sought to construct love with you,
I brought my lips like bricks.
I brought my kiss to build
an impenetrable ocean on which we could float,
never sink,
hanging safely above the depths,
we got to talking.
I was so consumed
with the way your mouth moved
your words went unheard.
Your favorite color
was the first answer
I didn’t learn.

And so begins our love story wordless.
Each night I spent inventing—
Wordless became
unutterably happy
Wordless became
sound superfluous
Wordless became
anything other than the weight—
your body is a language
I cannot translate.

It lies naked on the page of your sheets,
that sweet dark ink,
may your frame haunt me forever
for failing to learn you;
failing to learn to find a way in,
your frame held the image of true love
like man and wife,
like blonde-haired Disney princess
come alive
obscuring the view of whatever truly lived in you,
I spent your devotion on my illusion.
I’m sorry.

When two people kiss, there should be nothing left to build.
When two people kiss, there should be nothing left to build.
A kiss should serve as a wrecking ball blitz—
to knock down old dreams
and return to the flood of What Is
I remember holding hands on the street,
hoping that other girls
and boys
thought we looked pretty.

Because the best kind of girls are pretty, right,
because the best kind of love looks good on a street corner
because the best kind of love is created
in the image of the heterosexual man—
Our kiss was always soundless.

Our kiss was always quiet,
ripple in the pond, gentle
whisper on the breeze,
but I want love cackling and screaming—
Give me a boxer aiming for the teeth
with ruin-blooming punch to sweep me off my feet,
the muscle-bound mystique
of brain and brawn to hold the light up to my weak,
I’d train beside her, hear the barbells clang
until the rot dropped from our knees
until I forgot the years I lost
to worshiping the quiet,
and the pretty.