Until then

When you kissed me on that bench,
by the lake,
under that tree that dripped with summer romance,
I thought I must be the luckiest girl in the entire world.
You imitated the bullfrogs, and I laughed,
and you loved to make me laugh,
so you blew raspberries on my neck,
and we spoke about pink elephants, and black holes,
and islands we would discover together.
We held each other like lovers who would soon be without
their counterpart,
and swore we would never love like this again.
But we both knew you were leaving.

I asked you to stay.
Asked you how I was supposed to seduce you from
hundreds of miles away,
And you told me there were plenty of benches in
Tennessee for me to kiss you on,
(and you always had something clever like that to say),
and I told you your wit needed updating, so you said,
“your kisses are better than hot coffee under my front porch
in a morning rain.”
I said, that’s pretty good,
kiss me ‘til it starts raining.

And you told me I was your favorite girl,
and I was thinking... “you bet your sweet ass I am”,
but I diplomatically replied with... “and you are my favorite boy”,
and you insisted I call you if insomnia set in,
so I did, and I’d lay on my pillow with my cell phone to my ear,
smiling, while you read me poetry in your deep, playful baritone until I was too sleepy to complain of the places between us,
‘til I slipped into slumber and dreamt of your hands
moving over my body with such deliberate strength,
but so....gently, so....perfectly.

And I like how you speak in full sentences in text messages,
and how your eyes soften when you see me,
like I’m some relief you can rely on,
And I’ll probably never long for another as I have for you,
and I can guarantee that no person has ever been so expertly missed as I have missed you,
and you will live in the deepest parts of me until
bullfrogs stop ribbiting and rain stops falling on roofs made of tin,
until that little, bald section of your beard begins to grow in.

I will love you until then.