Fourth Thursday

Settling

How do you write
With an empty pen,
something that refuses
To leave it's mark on a page
And draws upon your blood to smear lines
If you press hard enough,
You can still see it

This is the poem I swore I'd never write.

Last year, I learned,
When I drove back from Kansas City
And left my future in a college dorm,
That I would never have the ink
To tell you how I feel.

I would freestyle every word,
And hope you wouldn't proofread it,
I would hope that your eyes
Would face that space between the stars
And know that gravity would pull
The arc of that angle back down to me
And vice versa,
We interspersed between our vices
And swore our atonement on phone calls,
You were the last person I texted at night.

We argued every day about love poems
Because you said I couldn't write one,
And I agreed
And you were angry because I didn't fight back
And I knew that my pen didn't have the ink
And that every time I said your name
Stanza burst from my tongue,
I couldn't eat spicy food anymore.
I love spicy food.
And of course, we fought
Over how important you were
Compared to habanera sauce
And how you both would
Cause my heart to burn.

We would argue about your ex
And how past-tense it all was
And why I was afraid of the night
Because it meant that day was coming
And how you were afraid of the day
Because sometimes the sun hurts
And we rested on each other's shoulders
More than our pillows
From across a state,
Distance is nothing but a longer glance.

This is the poem I swore I'd never write

You live in St. Louis,
Local, and every guy on the metro
Tries to holla at you
And you laugh it off,
They don't get you like
You do.

Neither do I,
Which is why I listen when you speak
And admire the class that passes
Through accented lips
You carry yourself like Athena
In a warzone speaking
With Poseidon's tongue
And I rode those waves
Because it's the closest I may ever be
To a beach.

You taught me how to deserve.

You taught me that St. Louis
Is an idea and that poetry
Is born in rivers and lakes
And that I would never find love
In a person, but I could find it
In their notebooks. You taught me
To be tough and fight with every
Word I have and never be afraid
To lose a battle
But to hobble my way home

This is the poem I swore I'd never write

Not because I'm afraid,
But because I'm tired of writing about women
Who don't exist
And fueling stomachs of players
Who use love poems as lust songs,
My stanzas are not dog food.
I swore that I would never write
About love because it sits above
My pen and drips onto my fingers
And I don't know how to wash it off.
It's a part of me I can't erase,
The ink,
That misstep,
That awkward laugh,
That dropped book
That deep sigh,
That late night conversation,
My heart speaking Morse code,
And its inability to simple say "Yes."

I swore I'd never write a love poem
Until I fell in love
Instead, I settled with the day that
Love stopped falling and I decided
To play catch-up.