Today
on the side of love
and I’ll tell you now,
yes, you should fly across the country just
for 48 hours in her arms
spend your last dollar and borrow more
to get there
steal words from the past and
ink them along your lower left rib
in a promise to never risk this.
then risk it.
let it get fucking messy.
get naked and swim around in the
havoc you’ve brought forth
by loving
claim fiercely only the brief moments
you are given.
then take more
take everything
take with relentless fury
take until the taking looks like giving
and the giving looks like a prayer.
love like holy looks when it says your name
like a confession booth redemption.
and like on your knees supplication
to gods you don’t believe in
then see what happens if you believe in them.
love like the cadence of poetry.
like nails down your back
like a battering ram
like a mother holds her child.
like a consecrated temple
and like a seedy hotel room affair.
love like everything depends on it.
because it does
and it doesn’t
so love them both
love wrong till it’s right
love like they tell you
you could not
should not
can not
and then do.
love like you had the chance and didn’t take it
love like you did and didn’t make it.
and in the quiet, desperate moments
before giving up everything.
love like you’re just about to come…
undone
now hold on. don’t let go.
love with your hands
just like your grandparents, arthritic knuckles clasped tight on their 50th wedding anniversary
like a newborn baby
palm curled around your index finger with a grip so fierce you’d swear he could hold the weight of the world.
then let it all fall down.
and love like a fist fight
like a palm reader
like fingers trailing across braille.
like rock paper scissors
and like sign language speaking silent truths from across a crowded room.
love with your mouth.
like the sweet expectation of the moments before your very first kiss
and like the screaming match where you hurled words like they were the weapons that would set you free.
love like the taste dark chocolate and red wine mingling on your tongue
and licking a cherry popsicle on a hot summer day.
love like leaving bite marks on pale skin
and like swallowing bitter truths so you don’t hurt him anymore.
Love like the past
like wandering through an antique shop and feeling the whispers of long ago memories in dust of discarded things.
Like old, soft leather and the hard crack of a whip,
Like a long forgotten love letter slipped in the back of an old book.
Like a typewriter with sticky keys that keeps on spelling his name no matter how many times you tell them you’ve moved on.
love like the day you walked down the aisle and the day you signed the divorce papers
like the way you drew in that shaky breath right before she touched you for the first time and
like you stopped breathing the day he went away forever.
love like you haveall the answers to all the questions you’ve ever asked and like you’ll never know a single one.
love like a tangle of hands and mouths and limbs
that goes on forever
and like it all ends. Right now.
so love in the brutal tearing apart of everything you’ve ever known.
and like your scattered pieces are finally being gathered together.
like your wholeness matters more than your goodness.
your wholeness is the only measure of goodness that love will ever know.
love like you loved Superman when you were five
like you loved New Kids On The Block when you were twelve
like you loved that boy in math class when you were 16
and that girl at the bus stop when you were 22.
love like you learned to love yourself yesterday
like the way you’ve found only yourself at the end
of every choice you’ve ever made.
love is at the end of every choice you ever made.
love like maybe possibly mmmmm ok, sure. If you wanna?
love like Yes! Yes! Yes!
and like saying “Hell no. I am worth FAR more than that”
and meaning it.
love like long lost soulmates
and like fucking someone who
could not tell you your own name.
love, you need to know your own name.
so love like a car crash
like a hospital emergency room at 3am
like a war zone
like a bomb shelter.
like a selfishness
like a submission
like a saint
like a sinner
like happily ever after
and like the sweetest one night stand.
just love.
stop pretending you can’t,
stop pretending you don’t want to
stop listening to them when they tell you shouldn’t.
love because you must
because you can
because you don’t really have to
but by god, you know that you will.
bring it all
down
on the side of
love
