Your Name is Borrowed Treasure

Your name is profanity
I moan in my 10pm fantasies
fictional limbo when I feel no guilt
for wanting you

Your name is Once Upon A Time
I was naive enough to believe
fighting monsters guaranteed
happy endings

Your name is a recycled fairy tale
wearily clinging to my daydreams, and now
your name beats me black and blue
until I bleed red
wine and sad poetry
a cocktail Italian symphony

Thinking your name
is to draw the mental Jenga block
that topples all
my strategically built defenses
revealing     my secret lifeline
of you acting as
my once in a lifetime:

                  serendipity's tiny details
                  arranged into one perfect
                  sunlit afternoon
                  sitting outside a Roman coffee shop

under Venus rising
to study you over my shoulder
and whisper a warning into my ear
that these golden hours spent
meeting against all odds to meet in favor
of my half-buried hopes
is borrowed treasure
the gods will want back one day

Tesoro mio, I'm afraid
today is that day I must surrender
your name from my well-loved
trove of misplaced dreams

—but oh God
I hope you'll be happy—
From the beginning
                         
                       to the end
of this doomed fantasy of pretending
I could ever be lucky
enough to keep you
I hope you will be happy