I'm sure you once believed
my lips to be made of velvet-
deceiving in their silky wetness.
I'm positive you imagined their touch
to feather across your check
with a brush of plush fabric.

You have daydreamed
about waking up to the gentle gleam of my eyes:
so deep brown and heavy from sleep
but content to be burrowed in your tattered duvet,
worn from the many winter days we had spent
rumpling the sheets.

You told me that the depth of my mind
could not be measured by any test,
that the intricacies of my thoughts
and the metaphors woven through my speech
could inspire the hopeless to begin again.
you told me that my words consume you.

And you claimed that if
all girls were jewels
then I would be the diamond.
my essence reflects light in rainbow colors:
a goddess among mortals.

But if you read mythology
and interpreted it closely-as you should have
with me-
you would understand that even goddesses are flawed.
they are jealous, devious.
they are human.

I looked forward to the day
that we can meet as equals.
I will step off my pedestal
and you will greet me as a person rather
that a loosely woven idea
torn at the seams.

You will understand, perhaps, that
my lips chap severely in the sharp winter cold.
they bleed and crack and often
bear no resemblance to velvet.

And I am inconsolable in the morning
for I am homesick for my dreams.
I yearn to close my pools of chestnut brown
and retreat back into the
comforting lull of
unconsciousness.

I hope you will learn that
I often make irrational decisions.
and I listen to music with tears in my eyes,
vainly wishing that I could create such
flawlessly captivating ballads:
ballads that my inferior mind
barely has the capacity to appreciate.

and that if all girls were jewels,
then I would be the sapphire.
not a queen among men but
merely her devoted subject.