"to the girl who works at Starbucks down the street from my house on Delmur Heights Rd, I swear to god I'm not a stalker"

when I asked you for a chai latte, what I meant to say was

I was walking past and I saw you in the window

I only came in here because I had to know what your voice sounded like

but instead of saying that I just got really nervous and ordered the first thing on the menu

I don’t even know what the fuck chai is or latte for that matter

but when god made you, he cussed for the first time

he turned to an angel, gave him a high five, and said “goddamn, I’m good”

you were that beautiful

I spent the last five days trying to figure out how I’m going to introduce myself to you properly

and I think I finally figured it out… it’s gonna be something like… “hi”

that’s all I got so far but I think it’s a good start

you see, I want that my-friends-think-I’m-crazy kind of love

that reckless kind of love, that wake-up-early-making-breakfast kind of love

that crack open my life and say look, you gotta see this kind of love

forget the shallow stuff, I want the deepest kind of love

that yeah, I wanna stay up late and tell you all my secrets kind of love

that every time I see you I fall to pieces kind of love

I want that stand next to me kind of love

that you are my destiny kind of love

that no matter what happens you’ll always get the best of me kind of love

that you get my heart and my mind, this world gets the rest of me kind of love

that invest in me kind of love

because you already know that I’m invested in you kind of love

that you come home, I’m sick, you don’t have to say nothing, I already  know what to do kind of love

I want, I want love

I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak

and then suck my ex-girlfriend’s name out of my mouth

just to make sure that she never comes up in our conversations

I want you to come to me like afternoon,

come to me slowly as if you were a broken sunset with the lazy sky on your shoulders

if you let me be your sunlight, I promise that I will penetrate your darkness until you speak in angel wings

pull me close to you, tell me that you love me

and then scratch your future into my back so I can be everything that you live for

I promise that I will die for you daily and then resurrect in your screams

I promise you that I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correct

and I’m going to be honest; I’m not really a love poet

in fact, every time I try to write about love, my hands cramp just to show me how painful love can be

and sometimes my pencils break just to prove to me that every now and then

love takes a little more work than you planned

see I heard that love is blind so I write all my poems in braille

and my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless

I’ve always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;

it’s pure and imperfect, just the way that god intended

see I’m going to be honest; I’m not a love poet

but if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love

I swear that my first poem… it would be about you

about how I love you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: scared

but reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads

so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you

you see, I’m not really a love poet

but if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window

you see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow

maybe some way you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me

because if you were here, right now

I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to

until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific Ocean

I want to drink the sunlight in your skin

if I was a love poet

I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful

even on days when everything around you is ugly

you see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings

that play symphonies every time you blink

if I was a love poet

I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture

every time I hear the vibration in your voice

so whenever I see your name on the caller ID, my heart,

it plays hop scotch inside of my chest

it climbs onto my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again

I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that god

somehow turns you back in to one of my ribs…

just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you

I swear, I’m not a love poet

but if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love

my first poem, it would be about you

and after all of that she was like, ‘so how do you feel about me?’

and I said, put it like this:

I want to be your ex-boyfriend’s stunt man

I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life

and some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures

just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer

if I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heartbeat do the bass line

we could create the greatest love song of all time whenever we stand next to each other, love

I was the only one made for you and you can be at last by Etta James

I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain

even though it never rains in southern California

and together, we would be music

and when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend

I’ll say no

she is my musician

and me… I’m her favorite song