Pink and Punked

I've got glitter on my lips and pink punk for hair
With the back of my hand I swipe the color off my mouth
and commit
For hours I planned this
So the eventual follow through-
I lean in and kiss you

I keep my hands away from your unstained face
My thighs are bare and my skin is exposed
It's cold in here
I sit in this kitchen, in this romance, and bask in this affair
I don't glorify the circumstance but thank goodness
for you awaken adjacent to my tireless body in the morning
I lay half asleep and half awake before any signs of leaving
With affection, with your words and routine, you bid me
To rise from slumber and sleep
I roll out of bed with this ungraceful infusion
You meet me somewhere between tongues touching
and an inch apart
My right hand hangs before my fingers are slipped
and we are intertwined
In only months we appropriated each others looks
Communicated in glaces and words
I gaze in your direction and recollect the before, the after
Pressure calls, our tangled limbs and stance, into question our status
The negative esteem imposed on my queer body
from the beginning of time, I learn to assume the worst
and protect myself,
No remorse here, a stone face hides this,
my pitiless pace, my fractured heart beats to my walk
I screen the call
Out from the corner store delivery truck
Screams a stranger disapproval
All your own, fears
but an image, an illusion won't take
you back there, swung your umbrella like a bat
at the circuit box and I'm curious whether or not
"That's beautiful love," as the stranger had told us

We got off on different sides from the same bed this morning
But life has taught us differently about love and such remarks
To me that love exists if only to slip, and then it seeps through me, my polluted veins and inspires my functional brain
At the seams I believe it to bleed onto everything
with every breath I reach, take back and believe this love is my own to keep

I pull my hat (that hangs at my hip) from my belt loop
Lift it over my head and pull the knitting down
I am covering pink ink blots and painted edges at each ear
I think that perhaps [if not for the hair] no one would recognize me
For my hair might be covered, now my hands unattached

"So, you two do really love each other?" he asks me
in the middle of the crowded sidewalk on a busy street
I file my central concerns in cubby holes and closet space
and find all those secrets kept displaced gushing out on me
Spilled thoughts are emotions and finally the paralysis, my body
stays steadfast and still stuck, I am frozen on this sidewalk
As I scramble for the words that won't come naturally
For me to explain this accurately, so I shrug and I scurry
10 feet plus distance have separated me from this man
My legs like my mind start running until I am so far from what love is
That I don't notice it chasing me halfway down the street
The man yells out to me-
"There's nothin' wrong with being in love, you know!"
"I KNOW!" I say, deliberately placed in accordance to my thoughts
So rarely sworn out loud and I know though I hesitate, that it's true
There's no question that I love him