sit down, stand up

The first time you made me nervous was at a stop heading to Quebec. The train was late and you were pacing, you didn't have a light for the cigarette hanging from the corner of your lips - I didn't have one either when you asked, I didn't smoke then, but if I did I would have been quick to pluck the cigarette from my mouth, lean in and use my end to kiss your end while you breathed in–– you made dying look beautiful even in your oversized teal raincoat - you were so pretty with your curls and spring-green eyes it made the flowers turn their heads to stare. As you walked by you cast a shadow with your hips and thighs that made the sky look down to reflect on you the leaves underneath the trees wished they could go back home so they had a better view, wished they could become as colorful as your footsteps or the sound your voice made when it laughed it made the butterflies inside my stomach ricochet off my limbs like maniacs so I cleared my mind and built a racetrack for thoughts of you to run laps through and as the sun set, and I settled down too I could tell that he and I had one thought in common as we both calculated the distance it would take just to touch you. The second time you made me nervous was when you switched seats to the one next to me as we leaned into the space between us, you said casually: what do your love poems sound like? I said I didn't really write love poems, I wrote stories with odd beginnings, there wouldn't be stars in anybody's eyes but I'd plant seeds under yours so that if you cried, they'd have fertile soil for gardens to grow in I wouldn't want my unconventional love poem to trick you into turning blue you said, what do you mean by blue? I said, blue like the bruises you get from love making an alcoholic out of you you said, you didn't really read love poems but handed them out like flashlights to people in the dark curled up like question marks not knowing what to do - you said, blue like the forget-me-nots we lay outside love's bedroom Two strangers on a train, we were moving in the same direction just in opposite ways. The last time you made me nervous was two hours later in a shady stairwell you asked me if I knew how to swing dance- hell, you stood up before I had the chance to say no your kite strings looped around my waist, tugged hard & sent my heart out the window. I wasn't ready for this feeling to flick on-and-off like a lightshow with your rainbow-colored fireflies: the red ones reminded me of stop signs and the lines we crossed when you reeled me in signaling go, go, go as both your fireflies and my butterflies turned green and we leaned into the space between us like a pair of parentheses.