WHEN A BOY TELLS YOU HE LOVES YOU BY EDWIN DODNEY!!

when a boy tells you he loves you, 
it will be the first time you hear this.
It's late, and he isn't even there to tell you this in person; instead,
from a car ride home from a bar in Chicago, he is there on business. 
Of course, you will smile because 
he sounds like he means it, 
because you believe him, because a boy has never handed those
words to you like crushed
blackberries in the palms of his 
hands-firm, young, full, waiting
to taste sweet with you.
his arms, creeping vines, begging 
to touch the sun in your face
saying, ''Here, take everything I
have ever touched to be closer to
you.'' His breath, waiting to be 
folded into a love note passed in
between the nape of your neck
and his front teeth.
He will remember the time you
told him you felt safe in his mouth, and he will never grow
hungry. Just distant.
When a boy tells you he loves you, 
you will hear music, the voice of your past lovers dancing up your,
throat, your stomach, and after-
hours cabaret still waiting on the last call.
That was when you learnt 
when a boy says ''i love you'', he means
''I'm getting ready to be inconsistent with you.''
This boy will tell you that he loves 
you not long after he had you waiting for two hours in front of a
cocktail lounge. Patience is
something you were working on, 
but no, not for him.
When he asked you tell him that you love him back, you will
be in a car in a parking lot of a
late-night diner. You will watch
the words fall into your lap like a spilled glass of 
white wine.
You will remember the day your 
courier pigeon heart got lost in 
the wind because that was a message you did not know how
or where to carry. And one by one, 
the boys have fallen as silently as
the birds do.
so eloquently, they used to speak
until i asked the questions that
broke them into ghosts, that bled 
me into a corpse with so many 
questions of my own for the soil, 
but their tongues do not know simple.
The things i should be hearing, the things that will make us living 
men in this time of insatiable, yet
dying lovers.
When a boy tells you he loves you, 
only to become silent like a folded
sheet of tissue paper, not wanting
you to decrease him into the truth,
do not crack your face into the fullest crescent moon at the tapered bottom
of a blackened sky.
He never meant a single word of any of it. He is just a boy, 
remember? He is just another
silly,  sad boy, remember?