The Madness & the Divinity
Poetry was the sound of your breathing as you slept inches away
from me, the feel of your blue t-shirt as it rubbed against my cheek.
Poetry was the color of your eyes as they bathed in the sun--they are
like pools of honey and you knew I had a sweet tooth.
Poetry was the way you made your nickname for me
sound like the one I was born with -- it was the way I fell
asleep on the phone when you told me you loved me the first time
and the last. Poetry was the tears and the anger and the frustration.
It was the madness and the divinity of your hands--the way
your arms fit around me so perfectly on those late summer nights
looking up at the stars as they dotted the sky looking down on us
in envy. Poetry was the way we picked flowers on a Tuesday night
in mid-April, being careful not to crush them as our hands intertwined
like fields of sunflowers and clover. Poetry is looking for love
in every new person I meet and never finding it. Poetry is
not knowing if I want to find it at all. Its loving myself
in the way I have always wanted someone to love me,
in the way it is the opposite of haunted, the opposite
of broke, the opposite of sinking but instead like a rock
skipping over the water. Its loving yourself so much
you no longer give anyone the chance until you feel like
all your friends hate you because you don't laugh like you used to,
your heart heavy now with expectations. I remember planting
marigolds on the side of my house where I used to play when I was younger. I remember pricking my finger on the red paint as I kept
chipping and chipping -- I discovered underneath was a softer
more palatable color. I do not want to be "more palatable."
I want to be as sour or as salty or as sweet as I would like,
as fiery red hot as the chips of paint I do not have
to accommodate anyone's taste to be loved anymore, just like
how butterflies still somehow find their way to flowers
every summer. Poetry is the irony and indecisiveness
of your own heart wanting to be understood but instead
rolling up the welcome mat on the front porch and replacing it
with a sign in your sitting room that says "no entry beyond this point."
You allow them to sit and chat until conversation becomes heavy,
until the atmosphere becomes too dense, until you are sitting
uneasy till you rush them out and into the night's plutonian shore
demanding they come back nevermore. Poetry is listening
to every heartbeat you ever loved or hated just to remember
how a heart works on days where you don't seem to have one.
Poetry is showering in the sunlight of your own words, your own
love, your own disposition because if no one can understand you
how could they love you? Poetry is waiting for me in the nothing
at all reaching her hand out to make it all worth something.
