In moments like these

(when I sing out your surname in the checkout queue;

when I go to bed love-hungry and wake up love-ravenous;

when I hear “Chavez Ravine” and I think “artichokes,” I think “red sauce”;

when, on the smoke-alarm night that follows a commerce-clause afternoon,

I show you my one true color: printer-paper purple;

when I watch your ex-whatever give herself a pair of angel wings under studio lights:

stretch her arms behind her head and with two charcoaled hands

knead the muscle between her shoulders and deposit eight gray finger-streaks

like feathers on her flesh;

when we wake up and I don’t have to tell you what I’ve dreamt of,

because you’ve slept in my bed, and that’s as good as knowing;

when bankrupt forks run away with kleptomaniacs spoons;

when I sit for hours idly tapping sap, pulling back to find my fingers sweet with diacetyl;

when I say goodbye and I turn away and all at once I remember the things I’ve forgotten:

to convince you of my love, to give you just one more kiss)

I make difficult promises easily.

So on this day of sung surnames, of love-hunger, of kisses n+1,

I’ll promise you this:

that I’ll sing all the way to the pushcart return;

that I’ll feed myself well, on love and on artichoke pizza;

that next time I’ll reach for a magazine;

that I’ll admit fluorescents flatter the woman;

that I’ll recount every dream in living color regardless,

and make each one end like a nursery rhyme does;

and that, even living on breaths issued by lacerated lungs,

I’ll forever have just one more kiss to give.