I’ve read poems and articles and love stories and countless love notes, and I have always thought that love, and I mean true, undeniable love, worked one way. I thought that, if you don’t fall fast and abruptly, it wasn’t true love. For it to be true love, it must rush over in an instant and consume your whole being. You must become dizzy and dumb and doe eyed. You must lose sleep talking to your lover at all hours of the night to know that they're thinking of you. You will weap when a phone call is missed, a date is cancelled or a three month anniversary is forgotten. It wasn't until I experienced you, that I realized this wasn’t true love at all, but a mere distraction. A detour from reality. True love happens slowly and precisely. True love is morning breath and tulips. True love is two years later and finding a new freckle you relish. True love is not a campfire that will subside in the late evening. True love is the whole damn Western Hemisphere erupting into flames.

It is much easier to love with my hands

clenching your breast and my tongue

 writing sonnets in your mouth, than my

tongue praising your inhibitions and my

 hands seizing your tears.

You were convinced that my three glasses of scotch were to blame for my jagged driving. But I must say, asphalt isn't nearly as appealing as learning the rhythm of your lips when they're moving, or how many times you run your hands through your sweated out waves in a five minute interval. I remember how you blacked out the room so I couldn't even catch a glimpse of your naked body when I was writing my name between your thighs. I could taste your history in your kiss; a bitter taste I had once known so well. I ran my fingertips over your perfectly sculpted curves and read you like brail. Who made you like this? Past lovers had molded you into a woman that even I, after one taste, knew you were not. When were you taught that your bare skin and stripped down silhouette were shy of a masterpiece? What I would give to study your visage in every hour of the sunlight. What I would do to have you for one more night; sober, unfiltered, watching the candlelight dance across your profile as my fingertips rewrite your story.

I tasted the ocean in my tears as they kissed my cheek , but why? Is comfort synonymous with love? Or is comfort simply mistaken for love? To love is to be comfortable, but that doesn't make them one in the same, does it? Like when you can't bear to bid farewell to your first baby tooth. Or when you kick and scream at your first battle of scissor versus tresses. A gash doesn't pain you, but when your eyes catch a glimpse of crimson waterfalling from your wound, it's agony. You taste different on my tongue today. Sweeter than ever, but I for once, crave bitter. Can a corpse be revived once its gone. I'm on life support, I'm a vegetable under your heart's control, but I am secure.  I am there. I am breathing. But I am not feeling. Do we pull the plug?

I felt like I was home, but with a lock that I no longer had the keys to; with blinds that undressed themselves when the sky cried and the heavens howled. The pristine ivory paint began peeling away, uncovering cracks that freshly existed, and floorboards whined with the lightest of pressure. Shadows formed where the sun used to sleep and Warhols warped. Mice claimed the basement, while spiders housed the attic. The grandfather clock struck at 11:52 instead of midnight. The house stopped settling at night and that burst of air at 2 in the morning, never tickled my toes hello. The bluebirds stopped kissing the window when the sun graced the horizon, and the steady traffic decided to resign from it’s alarm clock duties. Water dripped instead of flowed from the faucet, and the bristles from my toothbrush were unorderly and awry. Doors that never shut, locked with ease and some doors never opened again. Frocks that I favored, I suddenly loathed, and family portraits shifted into obituaries. I kept the light on and lit a candle and realized, I was no longer home.

Who Am I?

So what am I now; the leftover, ashy remains of a cremated lover? The piece of a candle wick that will no longer catch the flame of a burnt down match, or the balmy wax slipping between your fingertips? Am I freshly laundered sheets you bury your aging face under, or the blanket of security you hide behind? Am I the worn down tires skidding against damp asphalt? Am I the sound of a kettle crying, or sugar liquidating into stifling cup of tea? Am I your pupil or your iris? Do you see me in a kaleidoscope of colors, or the lack of light? Am I the rupturing follicles of ringlets kissing your neck, or am I your fresh roots sprouting? Am I the musical playing at the stroke of midnight, or simply the ticking of the minutes? Am I the pistol your tremulous paw is clenching, or the bullet ricocheting into your gaping mouth? Am I your mind's logic, or your heart's chaos?

"Take your hands over your bumpy lovebody naked, and remember the first time you touched someone with the sole purpose of learning all of them. Touched them because the light was pretty on them and the dust in the sunlight danced the way your heart did. Touch yourself with a purpose, your body is the most beautiful royal. Fathers and uncles are not claiming your knife anymore, are not your razor, no put the sharpness back lay your hands flat and feel the surface of scarred skin. I once touched a tree with charred limbs, the stump was still breathing but the tops were just ashy remains, I wonder what it’s like to come back from that. Sometimes I feel a forest fire erupting from my wrists
and the smoke signals sent out are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen."