I learned to burn the map of safer places
and drive my hands into the soft geography of wanting you,
reckless as a man with nothing to lose
and everything to prove.
I traded silence for a highway
and took every exit that smelled like your laugh,
leaving receipts of small crimes folded
in the glovebox of my nights.
I promised ruin and delivered it like a gift,
have you felt a man give his danger away
with the same tenderness as a hand
that smooths a sleeping brow.
I lied to keep the moment true
and then confessed in the dark where confessions find their uses,
your breath a metronome that taught my chest
new rhythms.
I smashed my watch to be late on purpose
so time would be a servant and not a judge,
hours bending under the heavy gravity
of wanting you.
I left jobs unfinished and arguments unresolved
because fever asks for dues in sweat
and motel sheets and the math of bodies
makes sense where reason fails.
I learned the sound of your name in a chorus of bad decisions
and repeated it until repetition itself
became an altar I could kneel at without shame.
I took trains without tickets, lovers without references,
and each stolen seat taught me the geometry
of how close two people can get
before the world demands a receipt.
I wore the same jacket until it smelled of you
and strangers asked questions I answered with silence,
the right kind of silence that keeps a secret honest.
I mailed my patience to the wrong address
and when it was returned I recognized it as a lesson,
a currency I would spend more wisely later.
I broke furniture to feel something that felt like truth;
wood and glass make excellent witnesses
and the shards taught me where edges live.
I learned the difference between need and want
by burning both to see which flame kept me warm;
wanting you lasted longer, inconveniently holy and precise.
I touched you in public like a theft
and in private like a homecoming,
fingers learning the place names on your skin
as if tracing a country I wanted to live in.
I sang vows I could not afford
and paid them with minutes and mornings,
an economy of gestures that left me bankrupt
and oddly satisfied.
I forgave crimes against my pride
because your apology came shaped like dinner
and the willingness to stay when staying was expensive.
I stole a kiss in a room full of friends
and found confession in witnesses’ silence;
sometimes the best altar is an indifferent crowd.
I left when your distance became a habit
and I returned the next day with flowers
as humble restitution for absence,
the ritual of return more useful than any sermon.
I learned to apologize with work:
small repairs, late calls, hands that fix rather than promise,
because desire needs scaffolding to bear weight over time.
I tasted regret and found in it a bitter spice
that taught better recipes for the next attempt at loving
without burning the house down.
I kept receipts of the ways I failed you
and framed the smaller ones as practice;
I will hang them in a room called education
and move through it with less arrogance.
I never meant to be heroic;
I was merely greedy for the permission to be known
and to know you in a way that ransacked the ordinary
and left a clearer map.
Everything I did for love was ungentle, glorious, and a little obscene,
I traded common sense for the ache of your shoulder against my own.
Everything I did for love was foolish, true, and loud as prayer,
I spent my nights like currency to buy the right to your name on my lips.
I will not tidy every wreck;
some of the things I did were storms
and storms leave wreckage and also a cleaner sky,
and I learned to live in both states.
I learned to ask for less spectacle and more stubbornness;
give me the hand that comes back,
the light that waits on the porch,
the ordinary bravery of staying
when leaving is easier.
I will not soft-sell my extremities —
the lengths were real and they taught me
fidelity to wanting, an ethics of appetite
learned by trial and small repentance.