Saxifrage 31

Elizabeth Boyd A love poem (because I can.)

That is…

I have an idea. Let’s pretend that we’re in the mafia: two low-down henchmen that aren’t allowed to do anything, so that we have to sneak around our superiors and hide behind the cocaine shed when we neck.

We can wear long, billowing black trench coats and we can have perfectly clipped little moustaches.

When it rains, we’ll stride confidently across the gleaming asphalt, humming our very own rousing theme song.

We’ll have guns on our hips and blood on our hands, warm and sticky from the evening’s dark business.

That way, when my fingers stray to the back of your neck I’ll have something tangible to knot up my stomach.

And then on some dark, moonless night, we’ll escape.

We’ll grasp each other’s bloody hands and run away from the prying eyes and the questioning glances, and our angry superiors will melt into intangible nightmares.

That way, when you kiss me behind the old playground nothing will matter more than your lips against my neck.

Or perhaps…

Let us pretend that we are an upholstered white sofa grown on a sofa farm somewhere in middle america by two round-bottomed farmers and their ten polite children, who would be shocked to hear what their sofa is doing now.

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