We sat outside
at the picnic table,
drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.
I asked you to take out your barrettes, you said yeah, and as you glanced up,
Your hair danced up and down.
I smiled, you got shy, you said ‘don’t smile’,
I said ‘why’, you said ‘just don’t’,
I said ‘okay, I won’t’.
And I smiled.

And your skin caught like wildfire,
like there was no need for the sun,
You placed a finger on my cheek,
you said ‘that had to be done’.
You carved something like a comma
And I wondered what would come.
We went inside, I pet your cat,
you said ‘I think she’s lonely,
I think she needed that’.
I said ‘are you lonely too?’
You said, ‘no girl, that kind of talk won’t do’.
You said ‘the futon’s kind of lumpy,
but the bed’s pretty smooth’.

And then I thought about her laughing heart and all the tears that make us grow
And I looked into your smiling eyes and all the lines that take me so, so,
So much further than I intended to go. I said
‘thanks for the bed
I think the lumps will have to do’.
You said
‘it’s better that way’.
I said ‘yeah, I think so too..."

And then I thought about her laughing heart
and all the lines that make it

And I tucked that heart into the cradle of my brain
cause I’d never want to break it.
But I still picture your hair sometimes,
dancing all wild in the dark
I still wonder about that comma carved
so curiously hard and sweet.
And yeah, sometimes I finish that sentence
you left there on my cheek.

Cause you know us poets,
We like our moments complete.