by Colby Meeks

Smeared in dabs across your lips, like cutting too-sweet
berries. Like decorative and forgotten. I don’t want to tell you
for fear of watching you be gentle and genteel with a paper
napkin. I have a handkerchief in my coat, let me clean you.
I have a craving, let me clean you. Softly. Let me be gentle
this time. Let me be the one with tender touch and fingers
poised in polite and proper arrangements. Or we can forgo
fingers and dignities and unstarched cotton altogether.

Aren’t you tired of trying? Let me taste away the mess you have
made until we have forgotten why we believed either of us
dirty to begin with. Let me taste away the mess you have made
until I am only tasting you. And we can speak only in silence:
my coat fallen to the wayside, your fingers tugging on the hem
of my sweater, my nails rounding the edges of your shirt buttons.
Moving in something like slow motion, as to say this is worth
savoring. As to say I mean every single word I am not saying.

But if you want me to, I can say everything there is worth saying.
I can call you baby or darling or lover. Everything, if you let me.
How silly to think even a mess of something not meant to stand alone
can be so beautiful. How silly to think I could be silent with you,
as though somehow restraint is more sentimental than all of this.
Our skins and fingers and lips seeking out some total coalescence
is something worth saying aloud like I want to say your name aloud
like I want to say I love you like I love you, I love you, Iloveyou.

Colby Meeks (he/him) is an Alabama poet currently pursuing a degree in English from Harvard University. His work appears in Bending Genres Journal, Lavender Bones Magazine, Eunoia Review, and The Lickety~Split. His debut chapbook, DADDY, I’M SORRY, I CANNOT WRITE AN ELEGY, is forthcoming from Penumbra Press. He can be found on Twitter @babysbbreath.