Helium

by Rudy Francisco

I hope I haven’t already driven past my greatest moments.

but I don’t allow myself to cry as often as I need to.

Correctly 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 your sunlight, I promise I will penetrate your darkness until you speak in angel wings. Pull me close to you, tell me that you love me, and then scratch your future into my back so I can be everything you live for. I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly.

LOVE!

Alternatives to “Bae” The one who wins all of the arguments, the keeper of the remote, the girl who turns my stomach into a butterfly nest, the pink Starburst, the one I will always choose first no matter what else is in the pack, the red Kool-Aid, the right amount of sugar, the pulp, the part that makes the juice seem real.

LOVE!

There is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet.

Silence I’m learning that I don’t always have to make noise to be seen, that even my silence has a spine, a rumble and says, I’m here in its native tongue.

LOVE!