Exchange

We stand on the precipice of spring,

soluble with thirst and eager to be alive.

Let me carry the weight of your bones

in the crucible of my heart for a while.

I know that words rarely come

when they are needed.

We can be together in the silence,

in the sleeping hours,

in the beautiful void that is hunger.

Say that we are interchangeable

because I want to exchange myself for you.

–

You gather the hem

of my little black dress

in your hands,

like a love letter

and tear upward.

I have broken my heart

more times than I can count

thinking about you

and if I have the power to hurt you

does is mean that I don’t deserve you?

–

Teach me how to accept love

when it comes

because I don’t remember

what it means to be

comfortable in my skin.

With you I think I could live in me

if only to give you a place

to escape your loneliness.

I could be a beautiful home,

a mountain of treasure,

an open sky with a melody that carries.

–

Between my cherry red lips

you are tying knots

in my tongue.

If I could speak

then I would give you

all of me, every breath,

every shakey syllable.

I don’t think love is even

half of what it could be.

We could make it mean

so much more.

–

I don’t know if we love each other

in the same way

I don’t know it we ever could.

I promise not to die for you.

I promise to wake up a little more each day.

I promise to give you each and every

heart that has ever grown in me and those yet to come.

I promise to go deeper with every breath.

I promise to laugh until I lose my voice

and to cry until the stars have fashioned

constellations of my load-bearing sorrows.

–

I will be human, through migration and heartbreak.

I will be human. Raw. Bloody. Imperfect.

I will love you the way that god is said to love

but unlike god I have everything and nothing at all to lose.

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