What you want now is not what you need,
but I give it to you anyway, Juliet, as I climb
past the bougainvillea and up to your softly lit
balcony, having noticed your bedroom window
open at this exceptionally late hour, the thin
white curtain rustling. Somewhere nearby
an old radio plays Chet Baker singing “You’re
My Thrill.” I climb, pause only long enough
to look over my shoulder and notice the moon
display itself like a coin above the orange trees.
This is it, I tell myself. This is the one.
I remember school days, girls whose names
I once carved next to mine like bad poetry
on desktops, like tattoos on the wooden arms
of trees: Analiesa, Bridgette, Eleanor, Faith,
Grace, Hope, Juanita, Lewanda, Olga, Pat,
Riley, Safronia, Susan P. and Susan Q., Tiffany,
and Valerie, all of whom mean nothing to me now
as I continue my ascent, and the memories
we own together rattle inside my head
like dice: the first kiss at the top of the stairwell,
the eccentric pattern of your dress,
the moon’s reflection in the decorative pond,
your rain-soft voice—
which brings us to
you on the balcony in your periwinkle night gown,
and I, scaling the north wall of your parents’ house,
carefully dodging the terrace lights, a few feet
below you and still unnoticed, knowing perfectly well
that “what love can do, love dares attempt”—
and that I may have just one shot at this
as I approach the ledge just outside
your bedroom window.