When I become a mother
I will not tell my daughter how bad love hurts

I will not tell her that every time you inhale your lungs fill with helium instead of oxygen and you transcend so far off beyond yourself the only pieces you have left are the ones you've recollected on way back home

I will not tell her that every argument will feel like a land mine and every space apart will feel like a fire
licking all parts of her aching bones and skin till every muscle is tense with reaching
I will not tell her that sometimes these land mines are better than the machine gun first kisses and butterfly winged silent jitters

she will have guns in her heart because love is lethal at its summit
and she will learn that when she picks glass from her knees and tendons from her teeth

those summers that are sweltering
those summers that arrange armies of perspiring water droplets to swarm down my neck and across my chest
leave me glistening and stuck to the already too tight clothing im wearing
even the breezes are filled with an astonishing heat that billows over us like an atomic blast in our shaded safety
when our restless curiosity comes to a halt under radiating UV's and even the urge to kiss you is just as an intolerable activity as sliding back into my clothes that fit better off
as my lips are as hot as the black top and cracked as the sidewalk
yet you still want to mold into them like they're the ocean to quench your thirst