Butterflies

I think I’m in love

But I’ve been feeling otherwise

These flutters in my stomach aren’t butterflies

But cutting knives

And not the butter kind

And if you listen close when she begins to speak

You’ll hear a couple hundred sighs

And the collective shut of eyes

Letters linger on her lips like lullabies

I think I’ve drowned a couple times

Inside her opal-colored eyes

She could do something as simple as sit down

With the grace of Olympic dives

A perfect 10 photo shutter finish on her cocoa butter thighs

Catch her wearing loose pajamas on a Sunday

And she’d overshadow any supermodel on a runway

When she wakes up in the morning

She smells like vanilla essence

And the bittersweet recollections of your adolescence

Summer camp and piano lessons

And presents you got on birthdays

Orange creamsicles and double plays on first base

And walk past her in the halls

And if your shoulders feel the slightest brush

Then you might melt to liquid gold

The lightest kind of Midas touch

I’ve seen the way she drinks espresso during classes

And reshapes a paper cup into an emerald-covered chalice

Sugar packets pouring crystals

Napkin origami cranes

Gunning gorgeous glances to me through her Giorgio Armani Frames

She’s nearly perfect in

Almost

Every

Way

But she’s got shit taste in movies

Ask her for her favorite titles

And she always likes to say

She’s down to go see anything by Shyamalan or Michael Bay

And also she’s a psycho in the kitchen - it’s a travesty

What kind of fucking monster cooks their pasta in the microwave

And she does this thing

Where she corrects your grammar if it’s wrong

And clicks her tongue and winks and shoots a playful finger gun

As if she’s won some sorta contest

Empress victor-of-a-conquest

Mrs. Armchair shrink

Let me fix you with a comment

Princess kick you when you’re down

Worshiper to a godhead

It seldom happens that she listens to my voice

And doesn’t chime in quick with unsolicited advice

An unapologetic tyrant of passive aggressive rivalry

Ask her a question

And catch and handful of sass and irony

And trust me, she is just the worst at board games

Debates about the rules like legislators at a court case

Tampers with the scales of justice

Wielding pencils as her gavel

Once I even caught her cheating while she kept the score in Scrabble

She’s a fucking wreck at checkers

Plays Monopoly sloppily

Always bringing up disputes in games of trivial pursuit

Sucks at Battleship and Risk

She fights better hand-to-hand

And don’t even get me started ‘bout how trash she is at Candy Land

(Like you can't, like you can't be bad at that that game yet you've)

(You lose all the time, it doesn't make any sense)

But I’m no adonis either

Fashion sense abysmal, I’ve got two nirvana t-shirts

That I wear to formal outings

And I’ve never owned a cardigan

Catch me buyin’ cargo pants at Target from the bargain bin

Drink milk straight out the carton

Use my hands to scoop out margarine

Breakfast table etiquette makes up our morning arguments

And I’m not a glass half full kinda guy

Shipwrecked, flags half-mast hull kinda guy

I never was an optimist

Not too good at compromise

The problem is my ego’s far too fragile to apologize

But she always calls me out

And takes me down a couple pegs too

It’s always nice to have somebody close who double-checks you

And honestly, we wouldn’t be ourselves if we were different

Yeah, she’s clumsy and I’m stupid

Those are things that we can live with

Being perfect’s unrealistic

Either way I like our flaws

The way I crack my knuckles often

The obnoxious way she yawns

The way I stutter when I flirt

'Cause I’m not very good with courtship

The way she’s gotta pee the first ten minutes of a road trip

How when she cuts her pancakes it’s in slices, not in squares

The way my daily coffee intake is a crisis I'm aware

The way I talk in crowded theatre

And the way she parks in parallel

The way she goes through pints of Ben and Jerry's salted caramel