If Halloween and National Poetry Month were in the same month, my utter happiness would be complete. Alas, I only get to celebrate my birthday during Poetry month. To kick off the Poetry Month celebrations, one of my own:

Love Doesn’t Rhyme By Nicole Kapise Perkins

“How are you, really?”

Just one of the many things you said with too many miles between us;

you were the sun of my sky,

and yet we never exchanged friendship bracelets,

never repressed words or scary truths.

My therapist asks me to talk about you,

how we kept moving without coming forward,

the silence between us,

the things you said at 2AM when you thought no one was listening

but I was.

Am I no one?

I often feel like my body is a graveyard,

darkness planted in salted earth,

Romans laughing as Mona rots—

can people change?

All of my ghosts say no;

they snicker and point at my inner child

as she walks on eggshells,

so fearful of dying summer.

Every new September

I wake up somewhere between now and then,

a half-remembered dream:

nectar on my tongue,

withering flowers and rotting fruit—

“I am not afraid,” she says, “I was born for this.”

Bathed in a golden aura, she burned in twin flames.

I wake in sunlight

with the realization that people I don’t know have a life as vivid as my own;

you, in your sleep,

used to recite Angel numbers.

We’re strangers again,

we shared a kiss that didn’t know it was the last one.

Your sun sign wasn’t compatible,

there were too many storms to weather

and you never mastered the art of finding beauty in toxicity.

I look around at the empty chairs spaced around the office like wallflowers at a dance.

“He smelled like a bonfire,” I say.

“He tasted like burned coffee. Love doesn’t rhyme. It doesn’t make any sense.”