what love has done for me.

Oh, darling, you know that I
don't know much about love—
it's been so long since I've held
its hand, since I've cradled it
close to my chest, since I've
wrapped it in my arms and kissed
it goodnight.

This does not mean I have not
welcomed it into my home,
invited it in during the holidays
or the occasion where it borrows
all the sugar so that I can only
bake with salt - it has seen every
family portrait and knows
every story behind each one, which
I've always found strange because
we have never really talked but
love knows everything anyway so I
guess it's just polite to pretend that
they are as ignorant as I wish them to be.

When I say love I see fingerprints
left by years of soft touches, shared
clothing that warms the soul like a spell,
flaws breaking and entering to ravage
a clean home only to leave it smelling
like a lover who hasn't been home in a
few days; a soaking-up-breathing-in
basking glory tasting like sweet chocolate
and the sea—lovingly unique as you kiss
wine off the bow of their lips or the corners
or however they take their poison.

Yet, there is a love that touches in
private conversations and the secret
parts of my body - like the crease of my
elbow or the sweep of my jaw or the
casual curve of my calf - love platonic and
whole and bright and sparking lightning
with no clouds, dazzling in a way a
blind man could see—deafening in a way
that shakes the core of this planet deeper
than any plucked bass desire made passion.

My friends active and spastic and a
million different voices coated in colors
that don't exist and they're all screaming,
singing with screeching voices and
stuttering laughter that soars so high
that even God can rumble along and
they'll keep on their siren song as the
sky pours down because they are people
I could romanticize so easily—my heart
aches at their aching hearts and split
ends and red wrists - eyes - lips bleeding
for more than this, this being what I
can give them so I give them everything
and steal others with me if only so
the shards of my soul in them are
able to finally rest easily in an unfamiliar
landscape that smells like childhood
but moves in a different direction;
everything is so backwards here that I
have to clutch onto their hearts and, in turn,
they drown me in the most pleasant way possible.

For me love is a whirlpool, a hurricane,
a tsunami; earthquake and shock waves,
tornado and mile winds; a cacophonous child
orchestra filled with snapped strained strings
echoed by strangers filled with sun rays
and moonshine and starlight; love is terrible
darkness that sings lullabies with a lisp in
a language long dead yet not forgotten
in a land - country - world that burns
where no one can hear it scream, where
it wonders if it is really making a sound; love is
compliments dressed in blood and
nastiness and the feeling of knowing you
are about to die—eyes of a striking viper,
grace of a black widow, viciousness of a
mother tiger all in a woman you happen
to glance at in a crowed subway station
and you think her a divine consequence of
some sublime deity only withered grandmothers
wish to and you stare, wondering with
an awe-kissed slack mouth, hoping to
one day find her temple even if it now stands
as a tourist's Facebook profile photo.

Love is hurling yourself off of a cliff with
no water to tuck you in but you have decided
that the rocks will kiss you goodnight instead;
is trying to see if the stars themselves have
aligned just right to create a bond so mystical
that it can only be linked to the soul; is knowing
that love does not come in just that word alone,
that anything can be filled with the scent of it
even when hate is determined to drag Death out
of their retirement just to cover up the rain, the
flowers, your mother's special perfume; is
trying your best and knowing your worst is good
enough; is understanding that you are made of
meteor showers and super novas and black holes
and magic and the darkness between the stars.

I don't know much about love but I do know
that everyone has it—it is not whispers
at night or shouts in daylight or tears from
pained cheeks and bursting smiles; it is in
the chipped nail, the bandaged knee, the
messy room, the exasperated sigh, the glow
of a screen, the sign welcoming someone home
wherever or whoever that home might be -
the cliched and the heartbreaking and
the storybook all live here, all breath here,
just like the people that bring them to life.