Freshman year, he read
The Golden Compass and
popped bubblegum through
just-so-crooked teeth,
sitting in the autumn twilight
of five o’clock and a hundred
stretching shadows outside of
the auditorium where I
practiced scenes as someone else
and never quite wanted to resume
my born role, the shameless sinner,
a junkie in training from stage left
overdosing on the proscenium.
He stopped me one afternoon
with a hand on my wrist to hide
my pulse. Green eyes
are a recessive trait, always buried
somewhere in the tangled mess
of genetics and chromosomes,
uncovering themselves like
the spoils of shipwrecks,
pirate jewels, and he recited
the plot of a Southern romance
like an actor while I followed
true north through the gilded hairs
on the back of his hands where
my fingers recited a final monologue
before ten nervous understudies.

(Source: inchesgiven)