I loved impulsively even before I was eighteen.
I want to be a source of light to everyone I know,
like a pool of water the color of sea foam that spills
over sleeping lovers on the shore. Learning how to smile
at strangers without falling into their open arms
is a curse, not a blessing. I’d rather give these secrets
away like Valentine’s Day candies instead of holding
them inside their plastic box, wrapped up in a bow
until they give chemical burns to my insides,
like the time in eleventh grade science class when I
spilled acid on my lab partner’s thighs and he looked
at me like a promise, kissed like a gale force wind
in bed later that night. I remember removing
those bandages from his legs, how the flesh
was dark red like a grapefruit’s blood underneath.
That’s what desire is, not love: unwrapping someone.
Not like a gift, more like a wound that’s been hidden
for far too long. When I was a child, my mother read
the back of a Band-Aid box to me for fun.
Remove when the wounds start
needing time to breathe, it said.
Bullshit.
If love is a wound, there’s no breathing involved.
It’s more like hyperventilating.