channeling Lloyd Dobler

finally broke out this pen that

you gave me so many breaths ago,

and find myself regretting not using it sooner.

It flows across the page

like all the things I meant to say

or should have done

before our discourse reverted into

my soliloquy.

It begs the question:

maybe you’ve left

my heart

wrapped up in a box somewhere amongst

your scattered books

or underneath a pile of winter clothes

that you’ll try to squeeze into again next fall…

maybe it’s lost behind a bunch of trinkets in your

grandmother’s curio cabinet, or

stuffed in an old coffee can,

the kind they haven’t even made since 1974.

It’s still beating, somewhere

-I promise you that-

it’s just misplaced for a while,

and hopefully one day soon

you’ll catch it

in your peripheral vision

and remember how excited I was while I waited

for you to pull it out of the box I wrapped it in

and hold it in your hands.