I was never sentimental enough.

My thoughts always matched your words.

Never bold enough to speak them,

my arms were always cold enough for you to hold them.

 

Sweetness escaping your lips,

in the form of syllables.

Mine struggles to respond,

but my heart feels full.

 

These are the things I can only say in poetry.

And now I regret not saying them into your ocean eyes.

It’s just that I felt my words were

insurmountable to my tapping foot,

and my voice not poetic enough to say words

like I should.

 

I told you I would miss you.

What I wanted to say was that you made my emotions feel at home,

you made me feel okay with just existing.

If I wasn’t writing poems
I was missing,

the extent of the grace God had given me

those words to say in the first place.

 

I told you I didn’t deserve you.

What I wanted to say was that your words have power, your lips are soft

and what’s more I even shower naked now.

Every time too.

 

I told you that you were funny.

I know you’ve heard that before.

You take my quiet joy and turn it into laughter.

You always looked at the now and not at the after.

 

But in a good way.

 

Because you’re the one person I know

who gives a full breath to each moment.

 

I didn’t even think it was possible

for a man to have a heart like that.

 

I try to tell you these things but something stops me.

Perhaps my voice is weaker than my pen.

Or perhaps my words turn to smiles when I see

the dimple on the right side of your face.

My words turn to flushed cheeks

and goosebumps at your touch, each place.

 

We talk about touch a lot.

What I didn’t tell you was how you touched my soul.

You made the dark places brighter,

and the broken places where all there is is chaos, a little quieter.

 

We kept saying we shouldn’t do us.

But something about us moves the universe.

At the same time, us feels so small and so warm.

Your lips recite poetry well rehearsed,

but nervous.

 

You make the thought of eternity,

the thought of astronomy,

of gravity and everything in between

feel like a part of the poems we write.

 

You have a piece of galaxy in your soul.

It’s what makes your heart so intimate with the earth.

What makes the bones in your body so in tune with the God given definition of worth.

 

I hope you never feel like anything less than a light.

 

I’m working on saying words like these

outloud.

But as for this,

your soul taking notice of mine is enough for now.