the courage to love someone is found in early-morning sunlight
spilling through the gaps in your dirty white curtains,
the way the world feels fragile, magic, vulnerable, breakable, hopeful
just pulsing with the energy of a day about to begin
it's the fog poured into the air like tea steam on your glasses,
pastel smears of lilac and pink painted in the clouds like abstract art,
dew dripping off of freshly-cut green grass like melted snow dripping off your fingertips,
and the cold air heavy with something you can't quite explain:
the having is the pretty part
the not-having is where it gets a little ugly,
morning collapsing into day collapsing into night collapsing into day collapsing into
(painful, isn't it?
all this collapsing)
it's when the sun isn't there, and you're met with gray rain
dripping into the yellowed spot in your ceiling, making it a bit bigger
(drip, drip, drip)
the way the world is cruel, unfair, dark, broken, cynical
just pulsing with the blood-red light of the strip club you grew up by
(you don't even recognize it anymore, do you?
you don't even recognize this place anymore)
it's the pea-soup fog rolling off the hills, suffocating you in its heavy grayness
violent smears of red and orange and black biting into the sky like god's burning the heavens to the ground
dew dripping off over-grown browning grass like a cold sweat dripping down your spine
and the cold air heavy with something you can't quite explain.
***
originally published in ribs
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your heart and the sea
Poetrylike magnets, opposites attract: your heart and the sea (but who really defines the word opposite? blood and water, you and me?) | a collection of poetry
