We stand on the break of morning, leaning slightly towards yesterday but falling quickly towards tomorrow. The temperature is sub-zero and only getting colder, like the way that I feel when I wake, overheated by your closeness.

Let this winter freeze us in place like smiling Polaroids, however fake those smiles may be.

You pull me back inside, like you always pull me back, and smile a smile of sleep and predisposition, like you can read my thoughts in the way that you never read my words. The way you never listen to what I'm actually saying, and I return the favor, because that's what we are.

We are romance, sans sugarcoating.

"Snow is a rather pretty thing, for all the trouble it causes."

You are the epitome of agreeable, but not really, pulling poems out of the air when all they do is make me weak at the knees. How you could ever deal with me when I'm so perpetually weak at the knees, I can't say.

And this is nice, this duet solitude, a place too big for one and too small for two. We sketch our words ad-lib over bare walls, throwing our voices around empty halls so we always feel as though we're next to each other.

We are enviable, perpetually weak at the knees.

Being out of here is being out of mind. Heavy hearts of simultaneous wars drive me out of your mind. Being driven out of your mind drives me out of my mind. So many poems in the air. Remind me to buy a swatter, lest I end up like the old lady who swallowed a fly.

So weak at the knees, perhaps I'll die.

You begin to brew coffee, even though you don't drink coffee, and that at last drags me away from the door where I still stand.

We sing tunelessly because we can't all be stars.

"You don't even drink coffee."

First words of the day, and I'm already looking to argue. Over anything. Ten a.m. and we're already going to clash. Ten a.m. and we're falling quickly towards tomorrow.

"That's why it's for you." You really are terribly agreeable.

Abashed. You win. We didn't even fight, but you win. And when we fight, I win, but you're so damn hard to fight with that I can't help but think that I drew the short straw.

"It's colder in here than it is outside." Who slipped me a dose of obnoxious this morning? I'm on a roll. You don't say anything.

Silent triumph with too many casualties. I step towards you and bury myself in your embrace, disguising my comment as a want for warmth. Because you let me get away with that.

We are the language of silence, advanced note passing.

Because I will have my coffee, and wake up fully, and maybe be a little more agreeable myself, though probably not. We'll get on with things, or rather nothing, falling a bit less rapidly towards tomorrow and looking a bit less frequently over our shoulders at yesterday.

It's routine. The social contract of duet solitude. We give up certain things (pride?) to deal with being in love.

But it's alright, I think. The right balance. We're just out of our own minds enough to be in each others'.

Love is a rather pretty thing, for all the trouble it causes.


Nothing here belongs to me :] Review?