Rose petals, chocolate chip windowsills and 
my disease of falling in love 
on people's back porches.

I don't love you like neighbors.
I don't love you like park benches.
I don't love you like the pumpkin 
crooning about his own death on my
front step or the wind chimes that 
gossip all through the night. 
They're singing about the soy bean field
who mingles with the corn at night
when the farmer is too busy feeding
watermelon to the foxes to notice
their escapades.
When I knock at the back door I'm not here
to borrow sugar like I say I am.
I'm not baking banana bread or
chocolate chip cookies-- I'm here to borrow you.
Yes, I'm here again to fall in love
only this time it's you instead of him. 
I'm here with a basket of roses petals
that I held once at a wedding as a flower
girl when I was seven. I saved it for
this very purpose.
When you open the back door I'll
throw a handful in your face 
and then apologize artfully.
You'll invite me inside-- your vampire
your flower girl-- the love sickly
neighbor whose windowsill always smells
so horridly like 
chocolate chip cookies and coffee
and making love on a sofa bed
-- I'll come in and hide  
the petals all around the living room--
sneak chocolate chip cookies in your
sock drawers.
When I go home for the night 
you won't stop thinking 
of me and roses and cups of sugar measured
out to bake us into the same slices
of banana bread. Somehow you still
smell my chocolate chip 
cookies on your skin.
You'll eat me for the first time
and wonder how someone could taste so much
like everything you ever wanted--
I'm your own sugar and your banana peels
and a hint of nutmeg and rose petal.

We wake up.
We make pancakes. I make my oatmeal.
I teach you how I put my body together
petal by petal by petal.
I teach you that that I keep my body
divided in parts because it's been
too broken to keep in one place.
You sip my coffee and I teach you how
to wake up to me-- we learn love
from a back porch light where
I still sprinkle flower petals
from a bottomless basket--
peeling off pieces of myself to 
say I love you, I love you, I love you
Oh how I could love you again and
again and again--
open your back door I'm not here to borrow sugar.
You see that's the disease-- I always
end up here on a back porch of someone
I've never met already knowing that 
I love them.
I know that they dance.
I know that there's something about
the arches of doorways that makes
them uncomfortable-- I know that 
they take everything too seriously
and I love them for that.
I love them for the way they sit in chairs
to how they hold a coffee mug
and how they look out a window.
Oh everyone likes chocolate chip
cookies until they find them in their 
socks drawers and they know I'm just 
another vampire-- that I'm just like
the soybeans and 
I still love them when they dance--
I still love them when they dance.
when they dance 
when they 
dance
when they dance
like the rose petals that I had tried to
leave for them-- 
like there would ever be enough 
roses or cookies and back porches
to say I love you--
It's so easy to love for me. 
I want to learn to put you 
back together in slices 
of banana bread and teach the window chimes
on your porch to sing a song about me
and you and the way the soybeans have
sex with the corn on our sofa bed
each night and we never tell the farmer
and the fox eats the watermelon
and leaves the rinds.
I know that they dance--
Oh I know that they still dance--
They never needed me for that.
And when I leave out the back door
I came in it will still
smell vaguely like rose petals and
chocolate chip cookies in the living room.
You'll wash your hands and sometimes 
find that the sink pours out sugar.
Maybe every once in awhile you'll wonder
if I still bake banana bread. Wonder
whose porch I took my sickness too--
how much my vampire blood sucked me dry
as corn in October-- get lost in me--
remember me on your back porch.
Remember how I put myself together
in the morning.
Remember how I peel myself off
in rose petals.
Remember that I dance too--
only I dance in windowsill and 
back porches and somewhere
in between the soybean and the corn
where they meet at night to share
love and slices of banana bread.
Oh you know I'll always love you
when you dance.
When you dance.
When you
dance.