CLS Sandoval

I Should Have Said

 

I said Love.  That’s what I wanted to say

But I should have said something like ‘lurv’

There was something tugging at the corner of my heart

Then he got bored with my clichés

There were a few, several, a dozen

Moments I could have corrected myself

Somewhere mothers on the playground were watching their little girls and boys

Hoping there would be no scraped, skinned, scarred knees

I practically chased him behind the tree and turned to get his kiss—peck on the cheek

He took me by the hand and I said I’d never let go

But I said too much

 

If I Could Be Your Hope

 

Perhaps my fractured sunbeams have only been partially submerged.

Your hand skims the surface and the rays scramble.

All we’ve been doing is diving to the bottom to gulp air.

It took drowning for you to finally find your vessel, which of course you used to sail away.

[Thoughts of you infect and infest.]

You do for rhymed couplets what Cindy Crawford did for the mole.

Reliving memories inside of that space where our gazes locked

Through our fractured shared narrative you’ve embedded the

--necessary splinters--

for me to accept all that you reveal.

[Disenchantment becomes our common desperation to only improve from here.]

 

Held captive for so long melted my recollection of how to spread my wings

My mental optimism was consistently performatively contradicted by my return to my capture

 

Time has become my double-bind.

 

I will not falsely flatter because I intend each word as fact.

I set out to create a masterpiece because you deserve it with affirming acts.

You’re arousing my need to pluck daisies, [so that I’ll have a companion in this game of anticipation].

I’ll comfort myself that whenever things seem too good to be true, they always have been.

This isn’t the love we’ve always been running from.

This is what only we can run toward.

[I cannot allow myself to fill in perfection for your missing pieces.]

We have no set outcome and as this story gains its beginning we’ll twist the plot until others see no seams betwixt middle and end.

 

The physical world becomes secondary to the metaphysical unison beat of our hearts.

I left my teardrops behind only to gather them later as proof that I still feel.

Your gift of subtlety shifted my motivation, but I can’t help but be transparent.

I’ll ponder meanings between your well placed words while you sail waters I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of.

I’ve always been in love with falling in love

—but more than anything—

I need

a partner.

 

[If only these words could leap from this page and become reality.]

 

It’s a state of contradiction, a mixing of burdens, a definition in dispute

and

I’ll shift to the next scene.

You’re pulling me closer without ever touching my skin.

 

So many crowds engulf me daily, demanding my attention and time.

The sound in my ear is your voice, accompanied by a vision of that glint of sun in your eyes.

I lay with my eyes caressing the stars, in hopes that they can become holes which we can pass through.

[Anticipation makes my scars reopen until] I wonder whether I’m fantasizing or remembering.
Language is so limiting and simultaneously our only freedom.

These expressions I send you will be [lost and caught, but] never quite enough.

I will open up, allowing you to see my conscious stream.

Until I awake in the morning, I will be with you in this dream.

I am trapped within my fantasies desiring only your company.

Someday, we may again meet face to face but today, all I have is poetry.

 

Let me in.

Respond

 

The pastor says the best way to respond to hate is love,

And the best way to respond to fear is with faith.

I know I have this juxtaposition deep within me, too,

But I get bogged down in the hate and the fear.

 

If we don’t fix it, we’ll be headed to where it’s too hot.