Reading her poetry, it stirred me up,
with eye of newt, wing of bat,
and things like that;
and so I stopped.

When I called, there was no motion;
there was no potion, and yet I fell.

Instead, she slipped a note,
and I read what she wrote:

“Reading your poetry, it stirs me up.
Afterward, I can never remember
what to do with my letters.
I connect vowel to consonant,
and then consonant to vowel,
but what comes out —
is no language I recognize.”

That’s just how it was;
it happened just like that.

She came out —
in a collared dress,
with thimbles on her thumbs,
and flushed cheeks
that seemed
to say:

“I know more of
hugging and kissing
than I will ever care
to admit,”

and taught me —
how to color in my lips,
with pencil crayons,
and keep inside
the lines;

how to be
a sometimes red,
and other times deep magenta
kind of girl;

how to come out,
and say:
“I FELL IN LOVE WITH A WOMAN.”

Enacting our poetry, it stirred us up,
with each forgetting that she
was not the other,
and so we stopped.