Pulse

My flag is a traffic light
 And at night it glows red and green
 and I've seen everywhere
 so I guess in that sense the road really is my home
 And I've got poem after poem of what it was like to miss a home-cooked meal
 Of what it was like to wake up and feel my arm draped over your absence
 Breathing in your skin like incense
 And I bet you never knew that when I'm sleeping beside you, I wake up to make sure I'm holding you
 I feel like a mountain that doesn't know it's being climbed
 As your breath is timed
 with the in and out of mine
 I rub my hand up your spine like it was the center line of a highway
 with no stop signs
 Hit the intersection where your shoulders meet your neck
 and past the car wrecks of past boyfriends
 Who parallel parked on dead ends
 and I just hope your skin lends me an extra mile
 So I can slow down,
 take a while to admire the landscape
 and drape my arm over your being there this time
 When it comes to your skin,
 I'm a drunk driver,
 just trying to walk a straight line
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 And some days collapse on me like the nights
 And I can tell I haven't slept when the light peeks through the blinds
 And finds me with my eyes wide open
 Hoping I can take all these poems I printed on post-it notes
 Fold them into tiny boats
 Then launch them towards the shores of your skin
 Where they can begin to colonize,
 Take up roots in your eyes
 Weigh anchor in the harbor of your thighs
 Until the tiny hairs on your body begin to rise
 Like a million flags brought to mass
 And at long last I no longer have to roam
 And I finally understand those sailors who plant their lips to the ground
 I do the same to your body, it's because you taste like home.
 And what I said was I'll miss you,
 What I meant to say was that I love you,
 What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said
 I miss you like I miss my own bed
 after too many nights of sleeping on couches
 or hardwood floors
 Or sitting silently behind the doors
 Of hotel rooms became wounds
 Breathing life in to this loneliness
 I miss you
 Like a burn victim must miss their own skin
 I miss you like a sad ending
 Must miss someplace new to begin
 Because some say that the highway becomes a flat line
 if you travel it for too long
 I can't tell if that's true or false,
 But I'm racing down it towards you trying to find my
 Pulse