In June.

“So miss poet what will you write about me?”
He whispers this with a light in his eyes that rivals
the morning sun filtering through the blinds.
His fingers gently brushing my cheek.
& I deliberately avoid those adoring eyes-
unable to provide the answers they seek.

“I love to watch you write. You write with such urgency.”
I have no choice.
If a drowning man is offered a raft,
would he not cling desperately to it?
Poetry is… gasping for air that is not heavy
with the consuming agony that drowns my spirit.

“I want you to write about me that way.”
I close my eyes.
How do I make him understand…
I can only write poems about the people who break me.
About those who take…and take…
& leave my soul ravished &… empty.

“What will you tell the world about our love?”
How could I ever write about a “gentle caress”.
These adjectives are unknown to me.
How do I tell of a soft kiss,
When all I want to speak of is the whiskey
stained breath of the one I miss.

“You should start off with how me met. It’s truly romantic.”
How did we meet? I fail to recall.
Yet I can remember- sometimes too clearly-
the musky scent of sweat & …rage.
The broken look in his eyes in that fleeting moment
before we crumbled into irreparable damage.

“What will you name it? How about ‘A Love to Remember!”
I cannot bear to tell him that
His gentleness is more abrasive
than the fists of a drunken lover.
His perfectness is more suffocating than having
…my breath stolen at the unforgiving hands of another.

“How do you write like that?”
He could never truly understand
why Love & Hate; Passion & Pain
are interchangeably strewn across my verses.
& the reason that I look at lovers…
the way mourners look at hearses.

“How do you even think of these stories.”
I could never make him realize how
My mind inexplicably associates
unmade beds with grave yards.
That to me poems are..silent screams
of those who have been unspeakably scarred.

“You must love with such passion.”
He kisses my fingers delicately
& I’m terrified by the unfamiliarity of tenderness.
I say “I love hungrily.”
I don’t add that I’m only satisfied
by the fruit of a poisoned tree.

Amanie
(August 2015.)