In Honor of Valentines Day--A Love Poem

I wanted to finish something I started.

So when we kissed that first time
and you said, “We can do better.”

I thought,
“Let’s make this homework
for the rest of our lives.”

I want to make plans for the future.

I want to live inside a giant bookshelf
disguised as a house.
I want a vegetable and herb garden out back,
flower pots on every window sill,
easy access to my easy-bake-oven,
finger paintings hung like sconces on the wall,
and you
in a chair
studying,
thinking,
reading,
dreaming,
waiting;
ready for me to interrupt you,
eager to hear me remind you
that we are alive.

We are alive together.

So when I tell you, “I love you.”
I mean it in the ways they do;
on television and inside books
(and inside the looks they give one another
across candlelit tables)

But more than that, I mean it
in all the ways I hadn’t planned for—
the ways I now
can’t imagine
living without.

I wanted to finish something I started.
So I started with you.