I can't remember your face.
When I see it all together in real time,
It's unfamiliar to me.
You look like a stranger.

Later I will try to remember how it looked.
I only remember the tip of a nose, and
scrunched eyelashes burned into my memory
the memory of that instant
because they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Not even in their reality, in the fleeting existence of the moment,
but the potential of you all concentrated
in those scrunched eyelashes.
They were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I can't remember open eyes.
My mind fills them with black holes.
I have no recollection of a mouth or jaw.
No forehead, either.
But cheeks, yes, glittered with--
freckles? No, acne.
It should be disgusting,
but on you it's so endearing
that I must sit on my hands
to keep from grabbing yours
and resting my brow on your sternum
to send butterfly kisses to your
beautifully beating human heart,
to compensate the failure of language.

But I will never touch you,
to compensate for
the failure of language.