1000 Times
Before I die, I want to fall in love 1000 times.
In the next 50 years…
I will see another 18,000 sunrises and sunsets.
That means I have about 2 billion heartbeats left.
I need for at least 1,000 of these to be the victim of theft.
I want you to steal them from my chest right alongside my breath.
It’s Sunday. December.
1 PM at the bar.
I’m on my laptop and she enters.
It’s deep winter but I feel like heat ventured through each ventricle.
I speak.
Either I’ve seen you before or we’re meant to be together.
Maybe just for these seconds.
I can’t deny it.
Please entertain the idea,
if you can’t find the same feeling in your heartbeats
then it’s over and I’ll be stoked to have felt it
and be able to remember.
I don’t think I’m even strange or different.
You and I both know that love makes an imprint that never leaves.
Temporary relief from whatever ails and oppresses.
Permanent impact on the people who are present.
It’s Tuesday. Mid-May.
A summer night
and there’s no mistake.
Your face
carved into the side of the mountain of my memories.
A place I’ll never see this way again.
I thought I could twist fate to be with you.
Fell for you once before but this taste…different.
Years have changed the eyes I see you with.
Shape crisp in the mind of my fingertips.
Wait.
Realistically I know it could never happen
so I file this desire into the wish crate.
If I had enough skin I would tattoo each one of those moments
on my exterior to represent every feeling I had within.
My body a walking art piece drawn by the hand of fate.
Each fall, the pigment transferred from needle to inkscapes.
It’s Friday. The first day of June.
Hot as usual on another birthday
that came too soon.
Riding the train home from the uneventful
as I contemplate my desire to celebrate,
I see you and your boo.
We catch glimpses of glances.
Your head lowers and you smirk.
He said nothing humorous
so you cover your mouth with your shirt.
For the next 8 minutes and 32 seconds this romance is
all that matters.
This kind of love is my truth.
Fleeting but steeped in meaning.
I can’t stop looking and you can’t stop gleaming.
We reach my station but I keep daydreaming
Like the leaves falling from the trees so November in their color
wanting to catch them all, take them home like lovers.
There are limits, but I’m so determined to kiss the edges
of what’s possible, I believe the possibilities are endless.
It’s Monday. Sometime in the future.
We’ve been together 20 years.
You’d think we would be used to each other.
Love that pervades
even when we would be brutes to each other.
At times it fades
only to come back, these lights, this stage,
this encore of emotions is too great to give up.
You stayed
through multiple relationship deaths with others.
You held me to their graves.
We cared for us more than the old ways
we were taught to behave.
Made it work through massive waves crashing
so I feel no regret on board this vessel with your gaze.
Anywhere from a single look
to your name written across 100 pages in this notebook,
it’s a gift I’m willing to find and unwrap every single twine.
It’s a story I can’t put down, savoring every single line
for love at least a 1,000 times.
“Cliffs of California” photo via Pixabay.com
