Where Poems Come to Die

fragments

You asked me why I love you 

And I could have given you a million reasons 

But instead I gave you silence and a troubled half frown 

Because you can't love someone in halves 

Or quarters 

Or infinite fractions of themselves 

You can love them in wholes 

Or not at all

So I'll love you in the place where you break 

Heal your cracks with kisses until your breaths speak poetry and your eyes tell happy endings

And  I will love your crooked smile with all my crooked heart 

And let it warm the cage of bones inside me

Until I bleed fire and speak passion as a second language 

And when you laugh I'll feel the energy coursing through the labyrinth of capillaries wrapped around the pulsating muscle in my chest 

Reminding me that affection is not the way we love the things we like about each other, 

But the way we love the things we don't

And I will love you, god damn it. I will. 

*****