Hidden in your aorta is a way for me to win you back.

soggypoetry:

When my mother warned me about
the boys who parked their cars in our driveway,
I could see, in the fine lines surrounding her eyes,
the ones she could still love 
if it was not for the years between them.
There was his home-
the brownstone beside Mount Royal that she had pointed out
with a fond smile, her shoulders browning beneath the May sun.
There was the memory of a Vegas cathedral
where a guffawing Elvis swung his hips and legalized my parents’ love. 
There, in her screams, was the fear that I, her youngest daughter,
would be ruined by caring too much like she once had.

I have learned that those who dream of being touched
are often the ones who will push away the lips that long to kiss their spine.
I will admit that when I make a mistake my first impulse is to tell you to leave,
but it is only because I am ashamed, reminded that I might one day
have no proof of your existence but fine wrinkles from 
too many nights spent wishing you were there to hold.
(I have dreamt of your skin for so many nights I swear can feel it when I touch my own.)

Why, if the best lovers are those that can best touch another’s heart,
do we not look to surgeons and serial killers for the answers 
we seek in poetry?
Maybe I have been wrong in spending my nights pouring over words
for an explanation as to why I have a werewolf heart that 
turns wild beneath a full moon.
Instead, perhaps I should use the sentences you mumble before waking
as a guide to the hollow beating in your chest,
so I may search your arteries for a way to stop having “I love you” be
synonymous with “I’m sorry.”

Or perhaps a way out of this forest I planted
and back to you is graffitied in your pulmonary veins.
If you see a wildfire ablaze in the distance,
know that I have sacrificed myself in a final grand attempt
to prove to you that I care.