Heart Attacks
I.
Stumbling like a preteen drunk on your own selfconciousness
irresolute sidestepping awkward handgrasps,
trying to ask her out
there will be lisps of lips looking at stars on the roof of your mother’s minivan
lip glossed pink rimmed champagne glass rolling down the windshield
and looking at the crumbs of your midnight picnic stuck on the downward slope
of a cupid’s bow and texting your sister secretly: itsgoodithinkshelikesme pressing send and meeting her eyes rimmed with clumpedtogether mascara
and maybe your lips will meet too like two boats rowed out beyond
the eye of the lighthouse but who find each other anyway
in the vast lonely
the brilliant empty
and it will be soft and smaller and there will be no chin chafe or growls
(everything) will be soft
except for her smile, of spun steel and starlight, flashing like the quiet spark
leaping whitegold in the dark before it sets the world on fire.
II.
Sometimes I lay curled on my side
my body the open half of a parenthesis
trying to coax you to fill me with secret bed room thoughts
(your favorite position, that you believe in astrology, or that youlovemeyoulove)
or at least
your hands.
III.
You, smiling with everything but your lips
you lick them
satiated tongueflick as you digest my still beating heart,
I didn’t know that if I had asked for it back
you would have given it gladly
touched your own uvula to present it proudly
in great working condition if I remember
to defibrillate often.