Denim jeans, Satin dress

To Kennedy James and all the people who ever loved someone

Kennedy James liked to borrow from me

The first time I met him he was reading his newspaper, smoking his cigar

In Old Town Public Library in 2003

I trusted him when he said I was pretty, later I told it all to my sister

That he looked smart -kinder than he seemed with his crooked teeth

That I dreamed later that night of us two entangled in the sheets

I'd met him once

Enough to make a naïve me believe I could love him

From the angle of his jaw to the bridge of his nose

Though we never talked much I affected his feelings it seemed

Everytime I came to the library he read at the same wooden table where I came and sat close

"What are you reading?" he asked one afternoon

I said Wells' The First Men in the Moon

I lent him the book, but now that I think of it, as I write this, he never gave it back

I......

I could write on and on about how it feels to love one way without another, I have plenty of diaries with similar words in stacks

I confess it's hard to believe you can be loved

When what you love in others is what you hate in you

I just wish my blood didn't thrum that easily through

My veins, my heart to my arteries, where I shoved

All the little secret feelings I ever once felt for a fucking -once stranger, once friend- I never truly met

But I already dream of our downtown house with a pet

Does he even know my name?

I repeat to myself constantly Shouldn't you be ashamed?

I know something's off about me, don't worry about it, that you don't need to tell me so

'Cause everytime I'm screamed at and criticized is like a blow

To the heart.