As long as we are on this dirt road
in Metamora, Michigan
would you allow me to say

that our story made the reputation
of one hundred nineteenth-century
French novelists.

your hand is clutching the parking brake.
the sun is setting to my left.
maybe I should take
your subconscious suggestion
and stop-

suspended on the slope
of a very bad idea.

you said you were quitting
shoujo manga.

“my dark romantic,” you mused,
“is far too encouraged by it
and he pressures me to do things
(like flirting) that inevitably
backfire.”

I need no flattery, no false
witticisms. what I want
is the curve of the road
echoed in my neck
resounding through
your lips
Dvorak symphonies.
fanfares.

maybe you could play
my spine with
spare violist hands.
maybe I could forget
you are so fragile a kiss
might shatter your glasses.

i could slip into your dark
eyes and be lost. somewhere
where the stars
are streetlamps, out beyond
the idea of Metamora, closer
to Andromeda. some place

silent save your breathing
and the purr and the whirr
sleep well. would you
allow me to say you are
the most beautiful dream
i’ve seen waking? would I
allow myself these words if you
could hear? i should try sonnets

or odes. watercolor
over your face. cast you
the swashbuckling hero
of a slow-paced
philosophical treatise
on the nature of honor.

i am bolder than this.
but the only stoplight
in Metamora, Michigan
has your name on it,
and i’m afraid to crash.