Impatience

To say I love you

Seems premature

We’ve barely met

Acquaintances at best.

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Yet I’m already thinking of how we’ll make a compound of our names,

Picking out the curtains we’ll hang in the bedroom of our country cottage,

And deciding whether we will be cat people, or dog people, or both.

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You could write, I could paint, or finally learn to play the flute,

I’ll introduce you to my mother and pretend

To be embarrassed when she breaks out my baby pictures.

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Don’t you know, can’t you see?

Must I go through the tedious chase?

Must I dust down the steps of this half remembered dance?

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Can we not simply dispense

With all tiresome courtship nonsense

And live behind our picket fence

That we’ve adorned with roses?

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For is it not a certainty

I’m meant for you, and you for me,

And this love was meant to be

And you and I both know this?

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Take my hand, my heart, my life

Anything I have,

I shall give. Freely. Happily,

If you should so desire it.

•

But let us skip the dreary phase

Where I play it cool, or you play hard to get

Waiting arbitrary hours to make the call to say:

“Do you fancy dinner tonight? Or a movie, maybe?”

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For here I am, here I stand,

Enchanted by your bloom

Captured now and for all time

From across a crowded room.