Holy Love

My love, 

Here is one truth about me

I still have bruises on my consciousness and 

I don’t know how you reached through my ribcage

And left hickies on my lungs.

I never knew love,

Grew up surrounded by loveless marriages

Taught to be stone-cold and poise.

I learned growing up untouched and restless

Was a merciless combination. 

I am a plethora of blood-warm shadows

Wanting to feel holy. 

My love,

I never knew the stars had a flavor until I kissed you.

Turns out,

They taste like ambition and eternity,

Determination and dark matter,

And the mind numbing fear

Of falling.

And I knew I was in trouble when I first heard your laugh

And my heart danced to the sound.

Listen my love, 

God said let there be light. 

So when I told you “I love you” for the first time,

Nervous fireworks exploded out from my eyelids

And coalesced into kites and clouds and orange skies and 

I listened to your heartbeat like a satellite dish listens down to Earth lonely from up in space and I heard voices and

Touching you is fucking electric

The skin between your stomach and collarbone was 

Either a meadow or sand dune but

It doesn’t really matter.

I’m stuck there either way.

My love,

It took me seventeen years to realize that the loneliness didn’t have to win. 

We are young and brittle and full of mistakes 

And the future has always been a fickle thing.

Maybe Plath was right when she said,

“Dying is an art”

But my most beautiful creation

Was the thought of us.

I have never wished for life,

So telling you, 

 I want nothing more than for your last name to be mine,

Is telling you,

I will live for you.

My love, 

I never felt accepted at church

Holiness was not possible for someone like me.

The only preaching I remember is 

Being told I’m a sinner.

I’ll go to Hell with my thoughts of her.

Let me teach God a thing about worship,

With my hands on your hips.

Let’s make altars ring with jealousy. 

Isn’t it prayer when I say your name?

Isn’t it the moan of the choir?

Our love could make a religion. 

My love, 

I have been cut from a cold place,

Have seen stones burns,

Called a monster,

Demon-made,

Knew no love except bloody.

But nothing can defer me from you.

Because you and I,

We make holy.

And isn’t that enough?

 

This poem is about: 
Me

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