wyatt brion

i’ll admit i’m a romantic

the first thing anyone will notice is how i leave space in the word | tepid and intentional | i can assume no one will understand the complications of that | i’ll joke about how romance and relationships are gross, even make it a personality, maybe even mean it | and it’ll be easy to think that i haven’t grown out of being a child | that life will be easy for me | i’m more likely to be accepted into conservative, religious society because my decisions can be mistaken for chastity | i believe i’m so unlikable that i’ve chosen to identify as a challenge for anyone that dares | love me as much as you can fathom | i scrub the progress bar of a kissing scene on tv | and still spell out profanities when i’m in the house | i go count how many people will die under a church ceiling fan and receive communion in the same five minutes | i hold hands not for the intimacy but for the complete way my palms look when they’re cared for | i write | i own dogs and walk them to greet the neighbors even if i don’t like the small talk | i cannot be all this without sacrifice—being romantic affirms me | it chokes the world in a smoke | keeps people living and dying all at once for all the right and wrong reasons | its inevitability lies in my life as a warning shot | brace yourself because romance does happen | just that it’s not always between two people that stake their lives on a two-way promise | i want to learn how to live

Girl meets boy

I was first introduced to an idea when I was earthbound
to a boy with baseball bats for hands. His response to the crows

stealing his cookies was to hit home runs. He cried these times,
having tamed the thief, saying that he wasn’t ready to grow up.

He wouldn’t be ready, he said, he misses his dog already.
We backtracked to his hometown, much more cheerful than the boy

living in it, and met his mother. She cooked us omelets. She motivated
us to get out there—we were the bee’s knees. And the world wasn’t

ready for these knees but it was going to have to bee. What a huge
burden it was, I thought, for him to take responsibility by the horns

and leave behind this awesome mom. She says she doesn’t mind
the cooking and the absent father accessible via telephone. And the son

that wants to save the world. He can’t control the ballgame
as much as he did when he still was in the big little leagues.

Home was amiss now. He read my mind, agreed, and called me Paula.
In turn, I called him Ness, instead of the boy that misses home.