STARLESS EYES

I Write Crap Love Poems

They ask me to write about love as if it were the butterflies perching in my stomach and the melted cotton candy on the tips of my fingers. They ask me to write about it as if it were this porcelain covered ashtray that held ashes in the whispers of its nonexistent crevices. They ask me to write about it as if it were soft and warm and it was this intensely beautiful ache that made your bones unfurl and your joints dislocate.

But I cannot write about love like that. Love for me has never been a comfort that makes me feel as if breathing were as easy as diving into a clear pool of water. It has never been the soothing balm used on the third degree burns of a girl who thought fireworks were made of fairy dust and not of embers.

But maybe if I stay tonight, here between this moment and the next, maybe I can try to understand what writing about how I felt for you means. I rarely compare you to metaphors that transcend heavenly depictions and maybe it's not because I love you wrong.

Maybe if I stay the winter will freeze everyone's tongues and I can write about love how it should be - because -

For me love has been holding my tears in the backs of my eyes and remembering I need to breathe
It has been curling my fingers around each other and pretending your fingers are mine
It has been biting flesh off fruit and spitting skin off my lip
It has been waiting

For me it has been learning to love in metaphors comparing my heart to a tenderized steak
Learning to love in erasures of old text messages I stumble upon

I should write about love in it's dripping carbon monoxide and rose water scent
Maybe then they will see I do know love
I know it so well it has stopped being a cliche