Dear Love
I wanted to tell you that your shore
Is not compatible with my tide.
That you have drowned me far more times than I care to admit.
That from age twelve,
ever since I was old enough to realize
what a straitjacket was,
you have gagged and bound all sense of pride
and left it tied to the mahogany chair in my front kitchen.
I have done things for you that everyone else would consider desperate.
I have collected half the eyelashes of the first boy that found a home in my arms,
memorized the floor plan of another's elbow
and spent lifetimes waiting to climb up the staircase of the third one's spine.
Some might call this chasing storms,
but I have known you long enough to realize that it is riding hurricanes.
The first one you took me on,
I thought I'd never get out alive.
And now that I'm older,
it still hasn't gotten any easier.
You've left my skin so bruised it looks like a Jackson Pollock painting,
left me with scars in places I didn't even know existed.
My heart is a roadside cross covered in wilted,
dusty flowers
from a thousand different drive-bys and countless bullets.
Sometimes I think you'll kill me,
but then I realize you already have.
