I would like to hold your hand in the hallway
Any hallway
This polished tile, locker-laidened corridor of junior high school
The Louvre or the Taj Mahal
I would just like to hold your hand
Kiss you on the cheek
Or the lips if we’re feeling really gutsy
Wear your hoodie
Your baseball hat indoors
Backwards
Tipped to the side
Let’s slow dance
In the tarp-covered gymnasium, your hands on my shoulders, mine on your waist
Because we don’t know how to slow dance
I want to let you steal my sketchbook as if it wasn’t the one thing I wanted most in the world
To tell you how frustrated I am with the boy that I love when that boy is really you and all that I want is so desperately for you to heed your own advice
Touch my hand under the armrest of a movie theater seat
Because making out is so seventies or so high school or so grownup or so gross or so…
Touch my hand
Because I know the static electricity that will pass between us could ricochet off the moon,
I want to wait to really know you.
You are far too precious to hold before we know what we are worth.
Before we understand the gravity of letting go and dismiss the mere suggestion of that idea as lunacy
I want to go to the third floor of a building, the restricted area
The basement, the roof
Shout in the library
Be late for class
Miss the bell
I mean bus, I mean train.
I want to love
How they always told us not to love in the student handbook,
the right way.
I missed a lot of bells, busses, and trains, to reach you,
I was late for a lot more than class
Late to say “I love you” to all the wrong hearts
But that hesitancy was all just the pause between the prayer and the amen
Waiting.
For here,
for you,
and now.