Aaliya,

She told me she was ready to lie about how we met,

Ready to write an entire chapter about our first date.

Honey..

If you ever hear this poem

I’m sure you’ll run away

Cause I always said I wasn’t cheesy.

But if you do run away,

Let me be the ground you walk over

That way I could be honest when I say,

She walked over my heart, Aaliya.

 

I sometimes find myself wishing

That you were a priest in a confession booth.

A curtain separating our bodies from our voices,

That day I could tell you about all the poems I write for you

Just so I could know

How your mother must’ve felt,

When she first called out your name, Aaliya.

 

If you ever looked inside my mouth

While we were talking on the phone

You’d see how my mouth looks like the Bible,

When it stumbles over your name,

How my body becomes a postcard,

Ready to wrap it’s own self in an envelope,

Stamp my lipstick across the cover,

Write your address,

Post my own body into your arms,

I’m ready to spend a few days in the mailing system

if it means I’ll get to see your face, Aaliya.

 

She once texted saying she likes to eat everything including eggs

I asked her “do you eat Karela?”

She said “no that’s one thing I do not like to eat.”

I typed a text message telling her that I can never like all kinds of food,

Because I have a special taste for her conversations,

I’ve always been more of a tea than coffee person,

Cause she happens to be the woman

Who is my cup of tea.

But I never really send these messages,

I feel I might fracture the internet with the things I’d like to say to her.

See that’s why I wish she were a priest in a confession booth.

I wonder what confessing my love to her would then be..

I would write her a poem

And then leave my heart on the chair,

The next person outside

Would think the priest is inside fucking.

But really it would just be my heart,

Beating against a wooden chair,

Letting her know that the red thing in my chest

Has been hers since the day we first swiped right on each other, Aaliya.

 

Most days she likes to dress like a man.

That way she doesn’t have to cover her acne

Which she always says is ugly.

I think someday when I have enough courage

I’d give her reasons for why the pink dots on her face are pretty.

I once dreamt that while she slept

I kept up all night beside her,

With a pack of rainbow sketch pens

I joined her pimples to make constellations.

In the morning she looked at her face in the mirror and laughed.

I told her I was sorry,

And that I did that to let her know,

That her face is my personal version of a sky,

It’s the only constellation I want to look into.

I’ve kissed the stars across her face,

Seen them twinkle in her eyes

When we crushed the air between us.

See that’s why I always love meeting her in my dreams.

I can tell her things that I wouldn’t be able to in reality, Aaliya.

 

If you’ve seen news channels flashing video clips on the days of a lunar eclipse,

You’ll know what my body feels like

When she says she thinks I’m sexy,

I sometimes want to spend an entire night with her,

In my pirate pajamas and her black owl hoodie,

Spreading talcum powder on the floor

And sliding across,

Only cause she says she likes to exercise.

I would keep her up all night,

Telling her about the first Barbie doll I murdered

Because perfection pissed me off even when I was little.

And then I would click a picture of what she looked like at 4 a.m.

Show her, her own pixelated cell phone face and tell her

That perfection no longer pissed me off,

Especially when it looked like her sleep deprived eyes, Aaliya.

 

If she ever falls in love with me,

I’ll keep a water gun by my side.

Just so I could spray her wet

And hear her call my name out when she screamed at me.

I would make her stand in the bathroom

And look at her own self each morning.

Tell her, that she, is my lucky charm

And maybe if she looked at her own self long enough

She could be as lucky as I am, Aaliya.

 

On the rare days that I paint my fingernails

I like to paint flowers

So when she holds her hand in mine

I can tell her of all the places that flowers can bloom.

Especially about the ones that grow on my hands,

She once told me that yellow was her favourite color.

So I took her on a date to the metro’s yellow line.

Showed her why Van Gough ate yellow paint to be happy

And why she didn’t need to

Because she was already gay enough, Aaliya.

 

I don’t know where I intend to go with this poem.

Don’t know if your fingers could ever read love letters this long.

So instead I wrote Cupid a letter,

I’ve heard he likes to read,

I told him to strike you with an arrow for me.

But when that didn’t work out

I picked up my cell phone

Dialed dominoes and ordered a double cheese pizza for your belly

And from the look in your eyes

I think it’s working.

If Andrea Gibson was straight and had a love child with Van Gogh, it would be Aastha. She writes poetry, paints anything that crosses her way and believes in art, light, chai and tinder.