Dali

I

You said I couldn’t say it. You said, You can’t say ‘I love you’ until your plane lands in my city.

But my love doesn’t wait for customs. It doesn’t fill out declaration forms at the border. Sometimes, I want to lean into the silence after your goodnight text and ruin everything with those three words. I love you. I wouldn’t wait for weeks. I wouldn’t wait for months. I wouldn’t wait for the permission slip that is you saying it first. My heart seems to be doing that stupid thing again.

II


We said no games. And since that Tuesday, since that Tinder conversation, since you said, I can’t believe I didn’t talk to you sooner, the last time we matched, and I thought, I should have burned a super-like on you. We’ve been raw. Raw like an exposed nerve. Like a bruised knee from falling, falling, falling.

I said I’m never going to make you wait for me to text. I’m never going to let my phone ring one too many times. I refuse to edit text messages. I don’t care for performances of casual indifference. Nor silences. Nor waiting.

III

You make me want to give you my heart not like a hand-me-down sweater from a previous partner, but new and neat. You make me want to sing when I wake in the morning. You make me want to sing you to sleep. And, perhaps, sing about you leaving. Because the song would’ve been a reminder that you were here. So I would turn the volume up, even should it sting a little.

IV

I said, I know you’re going to hurt me. And I meant it. I meant, I don’t mind the hurt. I don’t mind the damage if it means I get to be loved by you.

V

I want you to love the versions of me I don’t even know yet. The self that wakes up grumpy. That cries at commercials. The one that will eventually watch you walk away and still not regret the apartment key she gave you.

VI

You make me want to take back every poem I ever wrote. I almost want to apologize to the world for misnaming “love” before you came along. You make me feel like I am falling for the very first time. You make me love love.

VII

Every time you say you feel for me, I want to crawl into your heart and make it a permanent home. Every time you sing to me, I want to forget about heartbreak. Every time you look at me, my tongue becomes a frantic runner, tripping over itself to prevent the confession from coming out too soon.

VIII

You make it so hard to be a cynic. Because when you talk to me in the ways that you do, I want to believe in happy endings. Isn’t that the most terrifying thing?