the chain from off the door

i don’t know you very well

i’ll be gone for another two weeks so i don’t really have to decide yet if we are real. but i’ve been mulling it over anyway. attempting to work it out in my head like a math problem. taking it for walks down to the stream with my golden retriever. how could i not? these are the only ways i know how to solve a problem. and i’ve been dying to solve you, though we are not a problem, not yet.

i don’t know you well enough for you to be a problem. having tall shoulders and taller eyelashes is all very well, but it proves to be little consolation when all i want is to run my fingers slowly down the smooth riverbed of who you are, who you really are, when you’re in the dark, in the light, when you’re tangled, upside-down and sleepy. i don’t know you very well. i feel foolish when i jingle your name in my hand like car keys because i shouldn’t know you well enough to spill your name like uncooked grains of rice, all across my kitchen floor. i shouldn’t know you well enough for midnight comfort. i don’t know you very well, but i am left thinking that you, you with your tall shoulders and taller eyelashes, could hold the slender moon up in the sky when she grows too weary to glow. and i shouldn’t.

this is a not problem, but instead a question. you kissed me in the dark but i’m beginning to trust words more than kisses. so what did you mean by it, all of it? and do you mean the same thing still?