We sat outside

At the picnic table

Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes

I asked you to take out your barrettes, you said yeah, and as you glanced up

Your hair danced up and down

I smiled, you got shy, you said ‘don’t smile’

I said ‘why’, you said ‘just don’t’

I said ‘okay, I won’t’

And I smiled

And your skin caught like wildfire

Like there was no need for the sun

You placed a finger on my cheek

You said ‘that had to be done’

You carved something like a comma

And I wondered what would come

We went inside, I pet your cat

You said ‘I think she’s lonely

I think she needed that’

I said ‘are you lonely too?’

You said, ‘no girl, that kind of talk won’t do’

You said ‘the futon’s kind of lumpy

But the bed’s pretty smooth’

And then I thought about her laughing heart and all the tears that make us grow

And I looked into your smiling eyes and all the lines that take me so, so

So much further than I intended to go. I said

‘thanks for the bed

I think the lumps will have to do’

You said

‘it’s better that way’

I said ‘yeah, I think so too..."

And then I thought about her laughing heart

And all the lines that make it

And I tucked that heart into the cradle of my brain

Cause I’d never want to break it

But I still picture your hair sometimes

Dancing all wild in the dark

I still wonder about that comma carved

So curiously hard and sweet

And yeah, sometimes I finish that sentence

You left there on my cheek

Cause you know us poets

We like our moments complete