Are you sleeping with someone else he asks;
I shake my head no, but my eyes probably tell a different story:
that every time he walks into a room my heart explodes,
and not even a specially-trained SWAT team
could clean up the mess it left behind;
his mouth gives me water damage an ocean would only
dream of. He leaves his underwear wherever he removes it,
in bed, in the living room, sometimes even in the front hall
if we’re both in a good enough mood, and I’ll find it
like a puddle on the floor, a gift waiting to be unwrapped.
Am I too boring, he inquires, but he forgets about the time
the rainstorm in New York City forced us to run three miles
just to hitch a taxi, and he carried me piggyback
the whole way, until we got in the back seat and he took off
all my wet clothes when the driver wasn’t looking
and gave him an extra tip when it dropped us off at home.
Octopuses are jealous of how good a lover he is
with only two arms; ships would fall to pieces and slowly sink
at the sound of his voice; peanut butter wishes it could
stick to the roof of his mouth.
Did I say something wrong, he begs, but the pickup lines
he scrawled me on the back of a napkin
when we first met in a bar would put
even e.e. cummings to shame. (He once brought
a bouquet of fresh pears to my office and serenaded me
with “i carry your heart with me” in my cubicle.)
So when he finally asks what’s wrong, I don’t have the heart
to tell him that he’s really just too good for me,
and I’m afraid that one day he’ll wake up and realize
that he could sleep with so many better women.
When I leave, I place the box filled with my hair beneath his pillow
so that he’ll always have a few pieces of me
to remember me by, and take one last look at his sleeping face
before shutting the door quietly behind me.