Love, what do you look like?

Love, what do you look like?

I’ve heard tales of your beauty,
of gold molded on your skin,

music rippling from your fingertips and
sunshine embedded like golden crystals in your eyes.

Your eyes, they sing of stories
of swallowed worlds, of living dreams,

eternal happiness.

And that everyone who drowns in their depths,
dies and lives again.

But I also heard that you’re cruel;

storm brewing on your lips, and misery caged in the cracks

between your teeth.

Your hair is a crown of electric wires

stripped naked,

and your nose, pointed, like sharp drills, gleaming,

taunting, waiting.

But love, what do you look like?

For I might have seen you,
touched you, smelled you, 

tasted you,
and I didn’t 

know that it’s you.

Perhaps,

you are the broken shards 

of obsolete seashells abandoned by the ocean,

the fiery diamonds 

kicked out from the sky, 

the melodious fluttering of a butterfly’s wing,

the dying growl 

of the thunderstorm at a distance.

Are you not the branch 

of the citrus tree swaying by my window,

the smell of tea leaves drying 

on an unwashed cup, the yawn 

of the cat resting on the table top?

Are you this tall, gangly boy 

I caught looking at me

for the seventh time since the bell has rung? 

Or perhaps,

you are the awkward, buck-toothed friend 

I hugged last on the airport terminal home?

Love, what do you look like?

They say you have many faces,

but which one is true?

Tell me, what do you look like?

Because I don’t know.

I don't know.