The first time we were introduced, he said the birthmarks on my left hip
were sexy & my hands were something a palm reader would fall
head over heels in love with. We went jellyfishing in Virginia
on the beach and when they stung his foot I licked the venom
out of the wound and kept it in a glass vial as a prize,
a token of my affection. We left pickup lines for one another
on the fridge with magnets, and he always tried to outdo mine
because he took a poetry course in college
before he transferred to a tiny school in Utah
and thought that made him some kind of writer. When we kissed
for the first time, I felt the sun come up
in my mouth and the next kiss chased it down like a thunderstorm;
he told me my body was a pothole full of rain
and he stumbled over it every time, & even car crash dummies
would be jealous of how sweet we collided with one another.
Two days before we parted, he read the pads of my thumbs
and decided every one was a lifeline leading back to the ocean,
again and again.