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