It’s not, truly, the way you laugh

Even as it rolls over my back

And makes the flames in the fireplace stand taller,

As if they’re leaning in to hear you,

As I am leaning in to hear you.

Nor is it the excitement in your stare, 

as you ramble about the things that make you ravished for the world,

things your listeners once could care less about:

But after falling for the way your face shines in a low-lit room,

With how your words are strung together like a siren song

Where each sentence crescendos and sweeps into another,

They are ravished for your next word.

It is their newfound passion.

They read books about whatever it is until all hours of the night, they can’t get enough,

Just so they can feed a conversation you could easily keep up on your own.

It’s not that you’re warm, in that honest sort of benevolence that stretches itself into your worst moments.

Because not even the heart of agony could bring into existence

what was never within you.

Nor is it how your eyes fall into mine like a boulder crashing into a lake

and I can’t hold it for more than a second.

Though that second seems to stretch for hours.

Oh, I’m so obsessed with you.

And if your voice could be kept in a glass,

I’d drink it everyday.

But you’re not looking at me,

Instead at the map on the wall behind me.

You don’t think of me, but of the places you’ll go, and the things you’re soon to see.

You’ll never ask me about the many books I’ve read,

Because we’ve never spoken.

We likely won’t at all.

I don’t know whether you’re truly kind.

I made that up by the way you spoke about your sister once.

I don’t know if you’re looking at the map because you want to see the world,

or if you’re simply bored.

I don’t know a thing about you.

You’re who I’ve made you, and nothing more.