Help me peel away my winning smile.
With your hands brush off my eagerness to please.
Hold me so hungrily that I cannot hope to serve so great an appetite.
Break me down and turn me out of my administrative jargon
So that all my happy-to-helps, brittle things of habit, shatter.
You must remove the tight armor of my suit.
You must unzip my real mouth, unbutton my tongue,
Pluck out all my prickly functionality, so well-groomed in the week,
So I might yawn, stretch, and react to your mouth in real time
Instead of making sure that every kiss is up to spec.
Break me down in love, smother my order in a passionate grip
That my well-kept manners can do nothing but tumble down with you
And snarl tightly in gratitude.

***

I haven’t updated in awhile. I blame the bureaucracy. I work in a very demanding environment and I have found that I’ve acclimated to being bureaucratic a bit too well. It’s good to have a partner who doesn’t like that and who reminds me (barbarically) that I am human before I am a manager.