When a Boy Tells You He Loves You
Edwin Bodney
When a boy tells you he loves you
It'll be the first time you hear this
It is late and he isn't even there to tell you this in person but instead from a car ride home from a bar in Chicago he is there on business
And of course you will smile
Because he sounds like he means it
Because you believe him
Because a boy has never handed those words to you like crushed black berries in the palms of his hands
Firm, young, full
Waiting to taste sweet with you, his arms, creeping vines begging to touch the sun, and your face saying; here
Take everything I have ever touched to be closer to you
His breath waiting to be folded into a love note passed in between the nape of your neck and his front teeth
He will remember the time you told him you felt safe in his mouth and he will never grow hungry...
Just distant

When a boy tells you he loves you
You will hear music
The voice of your past lovers dancing up your throat
Your stomach, in after hours cabaret, still waiting on the last call
That was when you learned that when a boy says "I love you" he means I am getting ready to be inconsistent with you now

This boy will tell you that he loves you
Not long after he had you waiting for 2 hours in front of a cocktail lounge
Patience is something you are working on
But no, not for him
When he asks you to tell him that you love him back, you will be in a car in the parking lot of a late night diner
You will watch the words fall into your lap like a spilled glass of white wine
You will remember the day your courier pigeon heart got lost in the wind because that was a message it did not know how or where to carry and one by one the boys have fallen as silently as the birds do
So eloquently they used to speak until I asked the questions that broke them into ghosts
That bled me into a corpse with so many questions of my own for the soil but they're tongues do not know simple
The things I should be hearing, the things that will make us living men in this time of insatiable yet dying lovers
When a boy tells you he loves you
Only to become silent like a folded sheet of tissue paper
Not wanting you to decrease him into the truth

Do not crack your face into the fullest crescent moon of the tapered bottom of a blackened sky
He never meant a single word of any of it
He is just a boy, remember?
He is just another silly, sad boy, remember?
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2016, titled "When a Boy Tells You He Loves You", by artist "Edwin Bodney".