ON MY LIPS

26″ x 37″ Mixed Media on Paper

“I want to be a lost poem in a stranger’s coat pocket, that conveys the importance of you. To assure you of my desire, to assure you of dreams. I want all the possibilities of you in writing. I want to give you your reflection, I want your eyes on me, I want to travel to the lightness with you and stay there, and I want everything before you to follow us like a trail behind me. I want never to say goodbye to you, even on the street corner or the phone. I want, I want so much… I’m breathless. I want to put my power into a poem to burn a hole in your pocket so I can sew it. I want my words to scream through you. I want the poem not to mean that much. And I want to contradict myself by accident, and for you to know what I mean. I want you to be distant and for me to feel you close, I want endless days when it’s day and nighttime never to end when it’s night. I want all the seasons in one day. I want the sun to set before us and come up in front of us. I want water up to our waists and to be drenched by the rain, up to our ankles with holes in our shoes. I want to think your thoughts because they’re mine. I want only what’s urgent with you. I want to get in the way of the barriers and I want you to be a tough guy when you’re supposed to, like you do already. And I want you to be tender, like you do already. And I want us to have met for a reason and I want that reason to be important. And I want it to be bigger than us, I want it to take over us. I want to forget. I want to remember us. And when you say you love me I don’t want to think you really mean New York City, and all the fun we have in it. And I want your smile always, and your grimaces too. I want your scar on my lips, and I want your disappointments in my heart. I want your strength in my soul and I want your soul in my eyes. I want to believe everything you say, and I do. And I want you to tell me what’s best when I don’t know. And when you’re lost I want to find you. And when you’re weary I want to give you steeples and cathedral thoughts and coliseum dreams. I want to drag you from the darkness and kneel with you exhausted with the blinding light blaring on us… and…”

~ Chelsey Walls