This Is Not A Love Poem

We will try our “love” out on each other,
our “love” a thing that—agreed—existed
in a prior epoch, but without the scare quotes:
we use scare quotes because we’re scared.

We will try this newish “love” out, or try it on
like an ill-fitting but cozy sweater, an orange
cardigan one can’t bear to toss out, or as we
offer each other new dictionary words—the accent

of our “love” is on the second syllable. We will
try the tongue and tooth of our “love”
to test its resilience and buoyancy. We will be
“just friends” through our “love”; please note

that “just friends” is scary too, & “just” means
“fair.” You are not “fair” in a classical sense,
but neither am I. We are the least-pointy people
we know and this should be enough but it’s not

because you’re in love with bartenders
& grad students with white socks, & I’m in love
with blondes, though I don’t often admit this—I don’t
want it to be true. We are both “fair” in that we

are equitable. We value pronouns and don’t misplace
apostrophes, & though you won’t admit it, we
both think the people of the world are basically
decent. We’ll have our Thursday dinners & our

common places. We’ll have our “commonplaces”—
“rooms” to which we return, topoi or loci
in the rhetorical tradition, familiar forms of argument.
We will look to these as models for future conduct,

discarding the bad ones & trying to make good decisions.
We will enjoy asparagus together, & though we are not
models, we’ll try to look sharp because of something
ZZ Top & one of your students said.

In your white shirt, smile, & ponytails, I’ll paste you
to my door & place my hand on your rib.
When you ask if we will ever be grown up, I’ll
place square quotes around “grown up,” like this,

& then I’ll say: “You are fourteen and I am
seventeen. We don’t know a thing about love.”