will you give me what i want? an armpit to put my face in - wet cheeks - a dark scented place to cry? will you open your arms when my mouth bows down before you, a watershed of everything pent up in me, glass and wire, anger and fear? will you pat my hair when i do good or hold my face to keep me centered when i am falling out of touch? will you smack me out of love? will you kiss me when you hate the way i talk to you, just to shut me up? will you pull my hair when i ask you to, harder when i say harder? will you hold my hand while i am driving on the freeway, crying, away from the last place that dealt me a blow, even if it meant i would swerve, and scare you into thinking we were going to hit the median? and when we do, and your car is wrecked, will you laugh with me about the blood coming from my forehead after smacking it on the steering wheel and make up cockamamie stories with me about avoiding a french drunk driver, to sneak out of higher insurance rates?

will you put the kids to bed at a decent hour and will you find my peppermint foot cream and will you rub it in secret spicy places? will you work me up just to bring me down again or will you leave me behind while you travel on? will you smell my hair or any part of me when i have been hiding in a blanket cave for a week, nursing wounds you had no part in causing? will you let me fall on you, drunk, at 3am and stinking of cigarettes i'll deny smoking? will you take my kisses both chaste and sloppy and never pretend at your feelings? will my random passion scare you or pull you together, will the way i eat annoy you, will you know that when i use my foot to slam the toilet seat down in the middle of the night it means i've fed up of you leaving it up on me, will you help me put on gloves when my hands are trembling too hard in the snow, will you bring each cup of coffee as you would have an engagement ring and will you melt when my eyes swell with gratitude for small things? all small things, are they important to you as they are to me? will you find meaning in my prepositions, will you make up dreams about us, and write them in your secret online journal to your friends you've never met? can i be your pretend girlfriend even when i am your real girlfriend? can we have stories and drama and can we have long boring nights with reruns on the tube? will you let me take pictures of your body, all over, and will you show me your favourite things to do with playing cards?

when we're camping will you come with me to pee in the woods in the middle of the night, holding the toilet paper roll and shining the flashlight where i tell you to? will you help me rub anti-itch cream on the mosquito bites on my ass? will you scream if i catch my hair on fire but then when it's out talk about how cool it looked when it first went up and help me make blue flame from hairspray? will you go through my things and throw away the pictures i never talk about but you know that i hate? will you think i look beautiful, in the middle of the night, and my mouth is twisted in pain and my body is betraying me and my mascara turns my face to decay? will you fall down with me and scrape your knees and stay down, while i bleed beside you, counting blades of grass, and the ants i killed in my descent?

will you tell me what to do with myself when no one else can? will you cage me, but let me free when i need it, and will you lead or follow? and can you?