Joelle

Joelle scares me sometimes

She tiptoes on the edge of the bridge 

Wearing high heels 

Half drunk and half-asleep 

And I hold her hand tightly 

Afraid she might fall and disappear 

She jumps into my arms abruptly 

And puts her lips on mine 

I feel my heart burning 

And chanting her name on repeat

Like a poem trying to make sense 

And I make them a habit - poetry and her. 

She doesn't talk about politics

Says the world is gonna burn anyway

Instead, she talks about the planets far away

And paints us into different constellations

She talks about the flowers unnamed

And how she would collect them all for me 

And I sit there in awe of her 

Trying to figure out what she's thinking 

When she sits by the window 

Staring at the horizon and beyond 

As if communicating with cosmic entities 

That only answer to her. 

I watch her fall asleep on my lap 

Her heartbeat slowly syncing with mine 

Eyeliner smudged and lipstick faded 

I don't ask her about the marks on her neck 

Or her stomach or thighs

She often jokes about her past memories 

And how her ex-lover almost killed her 

She laughs like it's some puzzle 

She finally put it together after years of trials 

And I look at her and wonder 

How can someone be so broken?

And yet so stunningly beautiful? 

Some mornings I'd wake up alone 

The other side of the bed, empty and cold

Only to find her painting blank canvases

She'd paint the Icarus falling and Lucifer rising 

Every stroke falling out of her hands like magic

She tells me we'd be living in Paris someday 

She'd be making art and I'd be writing poems 

She goes on talking for several hours 

And I sit there staring at her 

And thinking to myself 

How much of me is yet to love her? 

How much of her I'm yet to fall in love with? 

Joelle never calls me pretty 

Instead, she says, "You're real" 

And I spend seven nights 

Trying to figure out what she means 

But Joelle isn't the type of person

Who can be unraveled in a lifetime 

She's the kind they name planets and storms after 

She's the kind they write poems and songs after

One-touch and you'd catch fire 

One kiss and your lips wouldn't remember anyone else 

And I can't put it into words 

How lucky I was to have met her. 

I ask her if she'd stay 

She hugs me as tightly as possible 

And says she'd be a fool to leave me 

She talks about how this is the best time of her life 

And looks at me with piercing eyes 

Like I'm an equation she's trying to solve 

Finally bursting into a fit of laughter 

And I can't help but think

If this is how love feels like 

Warm yet so painful around the edges

Calm but chaos inside the walls

Familiar yet a stranger at times.

I wonder if someday she'd a memory 

Too painful to come back to

If I'd bite my tongue every time 

Her name fell out of my lips 

I can't help but think about the goodbye 

That perhaps awaits me in a dark alley 

Or a December night or an afternoon phone call 

And I think about how these words 

Will never be enough to capture all of her

Every minute with her feels like a lifetime

And the world is a beautiful place again 

And Joelle, she's mine.