i.
We go out to dinner
and we don’t look at each other.
We spend the whole night
scratching through napkins,
staining our hands dirty with ink.
I write your eyes into the stars
and you write my name into
a front-page headline:
BOY FALLS IN LOVE WITH A PAINTING.
IT DOES NOT END PRETTY.

ii.
I write you into something burning
and I am the heat of the sun,
a burning body that
you want to live in.
I turn you into poetry
until you become
the secondhand smoke
stuck in my hair
and I find myself pulling
poems from the shower drain.

iii.
We stare at each other
from across the room
and I spend the night
turning you into a metaphor.
It only takes three nights
before I realize you are
just words written
on the palm of my hand,
rubbed away everytime
I hold onto something else
too tightly.

iv.
The next three weeks are spent
writing poetry about your lips
as you paint the stars
into my crooked spine.
After a while, I grow tired of the way
you look at me like I’m a masterpiece
but are too afraid to touch my body.

v.
I spend the night tracing
the tattoo on your chest
with my fingertips,
and I begin to miss the boys
with the cruel hands
and brutal bodies.
Finally, my hands rewrite
your fear into an apology:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I have to go.

Lindsey Hobart is a seventeen-year-old writer, guitar player, try-to-be singer, and bunny enthusiast from a New York town that’s as quiet as her voice. Her work can be found at heartofthebitter-mindofapoet.tumblr.com.