Miles

I write poetry for you

I hide it beneath my tongue where you might find it

It is in my teeth

Your poetry is beneath my fingernails

Beneath my bite

I write poetry for you and we sing inside of each other

We sing inside sparrows

We are sparrows inked upon chests

Into

Rib cages

We are cages made of clipped wings

Canaries, still breathing

I write poems inside of you

On the backs of your bones

Where only ghosts can see them

Where there are no sparrows

Only vultures

I sing for the death of canaries

For the loss of air

To breathe only you

I write poems on your spine

Each vertebrae a letter

My fingertips upon your back

Stroke each key

Each perfect letter until I find you

Until they make sense

My fingertips search beneath your tongue for poems

You look for mine

We write poems together

They do not make sense outside of our mouths

We write broken poetry

Dirty poetry

Love poetry

We make loud poetry

And forgotten poetry

Tucked in glove boxes on dusty roads

Our poetry is a map

Each push pin, a piece of us left behind

Each crooked line

Each small town

A space between us

I write poetry in these spaces

With stone on my skin

My hands are full of poems

I have written on the backs of a thousand miles

Then ten thousand more

I wrote that first poem

With the letters I found on your lips

When we flooded the streets with ink

And wrote poems on empty hearts

And blades of grass

We left poems inside of coffe cups

Abandoned buildings and basements

We left them in late nights and parking lots

We left poems in first dates that came last

Mac n Cheese gone wrong

Wrist watches, bad shirts and door prizes

We left poems in the wet autumn air

French fries and sweet peas

We left a poem or two in a New York toll booth

And what it took to get there

We left poems every where we went

Waiting to be forgotten

We left poems in eachother

On the tips of our tongues

So when we kissed again

We would find the letters

And write one more