love will tear you apart

three poems (mostly) about love and heartbreak

as a bit of an interlude before a long in progress article, here’s three poems written this month. rough and largely un-edited, written with my knees to my chest. Writing is the only thing that has soothed me through the worst summer of my life.

Even in desolation I cling to my love, my forgiveness, my gentleness. No weapon formed against me shall prosper.

#1 - ‘AT YOUR HILT’

written after a prayer sung by Kristen Hayter, inspired by weaponry at medieval armory.

I wish to be the maiden on the hilt of your sword

laying belly up on the daybed post-coital flush creeping from inner thighs to dappled cheeks

well-fed on sweets and earnest white-knuckled grip.

when you are out on that battlefield

praying like a child

I wink at you through oil paint;

uneven texture kissing your calloused thumbs

and for you,

on tired, untouched limbs

I make the bed

and play pretend.

dashing poems across scraps of newspaper and

stuffing perfumed bits of hair into bloody pockets;

my love writes to tell me I will bear a daughter so beautiful,

the gods will weep.

and oh, my love,

upon his fall,

I do not eat.

#2 - ‘Love Poem, July 3rd’

I peeled off my stockings and my legs hang open as he played piano for me. Perhaps I’m too idealistic.

In one house, the doors are painted white with claw marks and saber-toothed storms blown through

In the kitchen, there I am, running my hands over the smooth folds of my apron and praying with my eyes wide open.

and in the yard there you are, matted hair and eyelashes slick with sweat ;

You don’t cut it so often now, do you, and your beard grows thick with thorns and your eyes are heavy like big jugs of fresh iced tea reflected in the pond.

damp gray fingernail grime molded to the leather-tanned skin, you look up at me, and your lip twitches.

Walking towards you with cold lemonade and bare wet feet

I wrap my arms around your chest and you fold into me like the setting sun,

relinquishing all but the lightning bugs.

I lick the salt from your skin like a hungry dog and pour the sweetness down your throat;

the dew comes quickly with the dawn -

and as I walk away I can only wonder if you’ll dream of me.

#3 - untitled

each new song he plays is a new path I take here. a childish little game. sometimes, when I go out too hard, I smell the chlorine from my favorite childhood pool. it smells like wet stones and clean lakeside air.

There’s a little girl in the valley watching her pup stalk its prey

Tricky little thing with furrowed brow, nails like knives

back in my grandma’s house it used to taste like mothballs and bunnies

And I’d sit in a child-cage under the stairs, sofa caked in toddler-spit and crayons down to their nub

the ballerina in the box spins sideways, you’ve dropped her too many times

butter-fingers

an old man soaks his newspaper in applesauce and scrapes it off with a yellowed pinky

grunts good-morning to his closest friend (with whom he shares a canoe and a twin size bed)

God gets bored all in a league of his own, and when he sees one of his pets having too good a time he puts something rotten in their path

And when he sees some sad doll taking things far too serious he rolls his nine eyes and fluffs their pillow or feeds them gum drops

until his idle hands start to sin again - his little cloth children say he’s got a real good plan

I saw heaven at Home Depot and hell in an all boys private school off the coast of

and there’s something in my stomach that never leaves some shaking creature whose veins swirl

When she bleeds they harden into licorice wheels.

in the garden I’ll be naked and my belly will protrude and grape juice will run down into the baby hairs of my navel and you will grow your hair long so it shades you from the sun and mine will curl and recoil and when you kiss me wine will pour from your throat into mine, and the snake will take to a long slumber,

because curiosity is the seventh characteristic of a complete soul.