When love arrives, the chills provide me no favor.
Not because the clarity escapes serendipity
but because the apprehension of the unseen haunts me.
More than fighting just because I hit the ground
running through fields of us,
laying in carnations, back at seventeen.
I found the answers back when we were younger.
I begged life to soften its grip on my bad luck.
I’d been alone enough Halloweens
to write a horror movie
and jump-scare the faint of heart.
A late-autumn sunshine
brightened through the breeze,
separating the blinds.
Still in our costumes, I observed Rachel
breathe through a light snore.
She stopped, burst open her eyes,
and shifted on the bed.
Rachel asked whether we had had sex.
I told her we didn’t.
Rachel told me she loved me.
I told her I’d never been more scared.
We stripped and shed
our facade over facile exchanges.
I entered Rachel; we plunged into a world
unlike one with bad luck.
I’m so in love.
Scared, I’m scared to death.