i would like to designate tomorrow a new national
holiday,
the day when everyone goes to work but us

instead, the world will split out a deference.
leave the whole right half so that i can study your
face like the
underside of Asia.
the way the corner of your eye and your jawbone
match up perfectly,
as symmetrical as the blush on the cheek of a first
dance.

a thousand colored pixels spell out i know you
across the table like
waterlillies.
i let you draw me in the space between our breathing.
your O-pursed lips hang like downed power lines
across the asphalt of
the cafe,
we are grounded. our mouths touch with my finger
still starched
in between,
the way a child holds a secret under his tongue
with a snow day.

i think that if i kissed you long enough eventually i
could get used to
the miracle of your chin,
the way it undresses your neck like a voyeuristic
neighbor.
i try to align myself with the rim of the
color of your eyes.

these things, they have all been found and lost
already,
there is nothing vocal now that is any newer than
the sound of a dying
man struggling to remember how to pray.
yet i feel that i should say them. cradle the outline
of the space
between us and mumble something univentive and
grammatical, as if every
sentence were suddenly multiple choice,
as if addressing an envelope.
i want language to crack in the walls like tiles of
terracotta,
just something that once was there to hold a space.

it's like not admiring the moon because it's been
done before.
even your blight of a tedious high school calc.
teacher
once tilted his neck back and memorized infinity as
the number of
strings on the fret of a star.
even the Romans spilled their drinks on the same
sand you call vacation.

i find this note while folding to-do papers out of a
shoe box.
you are the book i've been meaning to read for
years.