To the Girl Who Works at Starbucks Down the Street From My House on Delmont Heights Road, I Swear to God I'm Not a Stalker
When I asked you for a chai latte, what I meant to say was, “I was walking past. I saw you in the window. I only came in here because I had to know what your voice sounded like, but instead of saying that, I just got really nervous and ordered the first thing on the menu. I don’t even know what the fuck chai is, or a latte for that matter. When God made you, he cussed for the first time. He turned to an angel, gave him a high five, and said ‘God damn, I’m good.’ You’re that beautiful. I spent the last five days trying to figure out how I’m gonna introduce myself to you properly and I think I finally figured it out. It’s gonna be something like… ‘hi’. That’s all I got so far. But I think it’s a good start. You see, I want that, I want that, ‘my friends think I’m crazy’ kind of love. That ‘reckless’ kind of love. That ‘wake up early make you breakfast’ kind of love. That, ‘crack open my life and say look, you gotta see this’ kind of love. Forget the shallow stuff, I want the deepest kind of love. That ‘I want to stay up late and tell you all my secrets’ kind of love. That every time I see you walk on pieces kind of love. I want that 'stand next to me’ kind of love. That 'it’s by destiny’ kind of love. That 'no matter what happens to me, you’ll always get the best of me’ kind of love. That 'you get my heart and my mind, this world gets the rest of me’ kind of love. That 'invest in me’ kind of love, because 'you already know that I’m invested in you’ kind of love. That 'you come home upset, and you don’t have to say nothing, I already know what to do’ kind of love. I want, love. I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak, and then suck my ex-girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations. I want you to come to me like an afternoon- Come to me slowly as if you were a broken sunset with a lazy sky on your shoulders. If you let me be sunlight, I promise that I will penetrate your darkness until you speak in angel ways. Pull me close to you, tell me that you love me, then scratch your future into my back, so I can be everything that you live for. I promise that I will die for you daily, and then resurrect in your screams. I promise that I will love you. I promise, that I will love you as if it’s the only thing that I’ve ever done correctly. And I’m young, so I’m usually not even a love poet. In fact, every time I try to write about love, my hands cramp, just to show me how painful love can be. Sometimes, my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then, love takes a little more work than you planned. See, I heard that love is blind, so, I write all my poems in braille. And my poems are never actually finished because love, is endless. I’ve always believed, real life, is kind of like a supermodel before she’s airbrushed- it’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended. You see, I’m gonna be honest. I’m not much of a love poet, but if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love, my first poem, would be about you- about how I love you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: scared, but reckless, with no training wheels, or elbow pads, so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you. I’m not much of a love poet, but If I was, I’d write about how I see your face in every cloudy reflection, in every window. You see, I’ve written a million poems hoping that somehow, maybe, someway, you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me, 'cause if you were here, right now, I would massage your back until your skin would sing songs that your lips don’t even know the words to, until your heart beat sounds like my last name, and and you smile like the pacific ocean. I wanna drink the sunlight in your skin. I swear, if I was a love poet, I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful, even on days when everything around you is ugly. I’d write about your eyelashes, and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink. If I was a love poet, I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture every time I hear the vibration in your voice, and whenever I see your name on the caller ID, my heart plays hop scotch inside of my chest. It climbs onto my ribs like monkey bars, and I feel like a child all over again. And sometimes, sometimes, I pray to God, that he turns you back into one of my ribs, just so I wouldn’t have to spend another day without you. I swear, I’m not much of a love poet, but if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love, my first poem, would be about you.”
And after all of that, she was like “So how do you feel about me?”
And I was confused. I said, “Let’s put it like this. I want to be your ex-boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do- like trust you. I swear though, when our lips touch, I can taste the next 60 years of my life. Last night, I had a dream, and in this particular dream I died in my dreams and woke not knowing I was still sleeping, so I had to walk, you see, that night, I had to walk in my sleep, I slept through my walk, I walked backwards until I saw you for the first time, and I could barely muster the courage to introduce myself all over again. You see, I’ve been trying to find the right words. And I’ve been trying to take the right steps, for what seems to me, to be thousands of years but something always seems to go wrong, between us. We lived in Egypt and I was the Pharaoh slave, you were his daughter. Love that you lead to my death that they claimed that I seduced you. And after they stole my life, I was resurrected as a Mason. I made the foundation for your house. We met eyes between for two seconds. You left and I didn’t see you again until I died. I came back as a caterpillar. I turned into a butterfly. I laid in the palm of your hands. You brushed me away. The rejection killed me. When I awoke I was a kick drum, you were a snare. We were both owned by this drummer, named Cozy Cole, and when he died, so did we. But I came back just to look for you. I left notes in random places hoping that you would stumble across them. I called our names in treason and prayed that it would jog your memory. I would spit your name in the wind, hoping somehow, maybe someway, my voice would reach you, but it didn’t, and I died. I died early. I died young with breadcrumbs, in my hand, just hoping that you would find me, but you never did, so they buried me. When they buried me, they put these coins over my eyes, and I used them as bus fair, to get back to Earth, just so I could look for you. That’s why, sometimes, when we hold hands, every so often, I, I tend to hold on a little too tight, and I’m sorry. I just don’t want to lose you again. My mother told me that when you find the perfect person, you do whatever it takes to make sure that she’s next to you.”
- Rudy Francisco (via)
