Nevertheless

by Melissa

I feel silly sometimes,
recalling the ways I behaved
when a certain boy
tickled my tongue with poetry;
but oh, how he whittled away those feckless rumbles
that needed not written
in a poem of painstaking verity

I craved, if not delighted in
truth beyond the lines of wanton

his teeth rended me open-
gnawing not only the words left flapping,
like loose leaf paper
in the winds of uncertainty,
but those abstract spaces
fate chose not to bound (this time)

and perhaps I ought not be doodling
over such loveless caviling
but still, I adore him so