For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Donnie

Daniel Torres (he/him)

Inspired by Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry]

For I will consider my boyfriend Donnie.

For he grew up poor too, and I had no shame in showing him where I 
grew up--a home that had more people in it than it did rooms. 

For my parents, with their thick hispanic accents, struggle to find the 
nuances between pronouncing our names. “Danny y Donnie” blending 
into one--and that, I joke to him, must be some sign of validation or affinity 
that the universe is sending us. 

For my skin is the color of his furniture and his skin is the color of unadulterated
cream, yet we share our love as equals.
 
For he knows which moments of silence call for the lighting of a candle, 
its flickering and crackling a third conversation partner.

For, in the split seconds when our Chevy Sonic begins to hydroplane 
and we start to say goodbye to the world by making a mental list 
of what we’ve loved most in this life, his first instinct is to reach out 
and use his arm as a second seatbelt for me.

For my fingers fit perfectly into the northernmost rips of his jeans, 
where I am free to explore the warmth of his thighs on long train rides.

For he buys us those chocolates--the ones with love poems in them, 
which we have pinned up on our walls like little shrines to 
Pablo Neruda and W. H. Auden.

For he prefers other chocolate brands, but he still gets those.

For he admittedly abhors poetry, but he still lets me read him 
Mary Oliver before bed.

For, once in bed, he holds me, and we can rock each other to sleep,
our bodies fitting together so well.

For with him, I sleep so, so well.