Ready for Love

to look back at me in the mirror

Ready for Love

I want someone who is all in
looking back at me with
unwavering joi de vivre
while we sip on silence at three

I want someone who
when I’m gone
falls in love with themselves

in love with the prisms
that make up their world

Decidedly ha-ha-ing at the boggart

Prisons built by expectations!
Oh, how they tickle and taunt and tease
Trying to pull the free away from the free

Imaginary walls crumble
in way of a fearless fall

---

I jotted this poem down in my notes app on January 20th, 2018, at 4:01 AM, calling in the love I was experiencing with myself but in another.

Little did I know that in less than 24 hours, I would lock lips with the man who would unabashedly celebrate this buoyancy for life and love with me, who would work towards weaving it into our experiences together from then on out.

One tremendous thing about poems is that they remind you of the visceral taste of a time. And with that taste, may we remember the recipe. Perhaps sometimes it’s best to remember the recipe to ensure you don’t repeat it.

This time, I seek to remember it so that I do.

I was at a delirious height of life and love that season. Before writing this poem, I had found so much freedom to be happy in a boundless autonomy I had not previously allowed myself.

I want that again, for myself.

A sparkling dew of dreamy joy
bedazzling my everyday view

made of air so wet with
the juices of gratitude
it beads down my spine

dripping a dawn of carpe diem
past my panty line

all the way down to
the roots of my boots

I recall and call back that
sensation of gliding
down sidewalks and streets
I poured my whole heart in

It's 8:18AM on a Friday
December 9th,

I lift my soles onto this
slippery grace

tying my shoelaces
in the shape of dedication

I share this old poem
I break open an egg

stir hope into lust
knowing happily

that I must choose
to be ready for love

I want that again, for myself.

---

Sincerely,

Julia Fae