You are not
my weakness.

But the thought
of your heart strung to mine is.

That is most definitely my weakness.

I thought I screamed at you long ago
to stop,
to stop digging your Curare laced fingers
into my heart, and dragging me along by
twisted twine, but I didn’t.
I didn’t because you needed someone,
more than I needed relief and safety,
someone to heal you - not fix you.
Don’t ever try to fix people.
They are not clocks, but beautiful,
marvelous creatures with souls and fears,
and a mother who either loved them
or wished that they never existed.

I love you, I love you, I love you.
I’m sorry that you never learned that
you were never, or will ever be, a demon
trapped in angel’s skin, or that
your father treasured his shot glasses more than you,
or that your friends never loved anything but your wallet.
You are living proof that the world may be evil,
but it’s saturated with good. You are good.
I love you, I love you, I love, you.

I never screamed at you to stop,
not even when your nails threatened
to slice my aorta, because I have been healed
with the strength of a thousand sun-kissed dawns,
with a million drops of dew,
making something freshly new.
These things can heal you too,
but first you have to believe that
I love you, I love you, I love you;
I am a healer and you are good.

I’m sorry
that I fell in love with you.
I promised I wouldn’t - you promised too.
I truly didn’t mean to, at all.
Today, you told me you missed someone
and I had never
heard you speak her name.
No, it’s not okay because you keep
things you love tucked away like a
loose piece of hair. Do you love her?

She has to have patient, selfless, love spilling out of
every single pore.
She has to love
the world enough to make up
for your hatred of it.
She has to be gentle, and tell
your sister she’s more beautiful
than all the Birds in Paradise
and your mother she’s the best chef
she’s ever met, and she has to know
not to mention your father
and not try to fix things that will
always be broken.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
because I know she’s not all
of those things
and that no one will ever be able
to deal with how much you hate yourself
and your family, and how everything you try
to love ends torn into ****** shreds.
I’m sorry that she won’t stay because
you don’t actually know how much force
you use to push people away.
I’m sorry that the only reason
you stopped kissing me goodnight
was because you promised you wouldn’t.
I’m sorry.

My mother always told me
that beauty was a blessing,
but it was more of a curse.
I believed her,
and I was careful.
She never told me
anything about boys like you.
I wasn’t careful,
and I’m still not sure
if I mind at all.

You are drenched with the strongest poison,
the ones they use to make hearts stop
mid-beat,
every single pore in your body
seeps hatred and malice,
and it rejects every single
loving and gentle word I slowly ease in.
I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care
because I said goodbye to loving anyone else
as soon as you said my name for the first time,
that night under the streetlight,
and I’ll let all the bad parts in.
I know I can’t heal you,
but I can try.

You learned to count when
you were just two years young,
right?
Wrong, you have to learn to count again
when you turn your heart into a kite,
and let it fly until it rests in someone’s
unworthy hands who will steer
your kite back to you,
all battered and broken,
when they’re done.

You have not learned to count yet,
it’s okay.
You have not learned to count
until you forgive him,
and kiss boys who you won’t marry,
and stop forgetting to kiss your father goodnight,
because you were too caught up in wishing
he was kissing you goodnight instead.
Count your steps and realize
you can fall in love again, but
don’t stop there -
you think you’ve learned
but you haven’t learned
to count
until you see his hands
on another girl’s hips
and his face on her lips,
until your stomach threatens to push itself
right out of your very own mouth,
and everything you’ve learned to count -
one, two, three,
comes rushing out before you can stop it.

Again, again, again,
you have to teach yourself to count,
to love, to forgive, to move on,
to understand that you will never again
love someone who will make you learn
how to count
all over again.

We are fickle,
rushed, lonely, and lost.
I can either care for you
or forget everything in apathy.
Do you understand?

Before you say yes
and kiss my face,
realize this:
You are not
my weakness.
Love is,
or, the lack of it,
the endeavor,
the hope, the chase.

Interlaced fingers, wandering hands
are the best teachers,
the perfect cons.
The Captain doesn’t teach
how to tear love apart,
we do. We are earthquakes.
Don’t you dare romanticize
natural disasters.
They scratch on the chalkboards of your mind
and implant ideas that never should’ve existed
or they run their fingernails down instead -
sometimes destroying everything
they breathe on.

Tell me, please,
what makes you think I’m not capable
of loving you.
What makes you think that I’ve
never fallen in love with boys who
had nightmares so horrible that they wouldn’t sleep
for days upon days and boys who hallucinated
six crows always circling above my eyes.
Let’s not forget the boy who cringed
and cried when I touched him,
because of where his father’s hands wandered when
he was only five years old.

Tell me, please,
why I don’t know how to love people
who are easy to love,
or why you think that you are some
drastic case of sorrow, survivor’s guilt,
and enough anxiety and depression to bury the world -
you are not. I’ve loved people
who had laid themselves in
deeper graves than you.
Believe me, there is enough scar tissue around my heart
to handle loving every single
part of you.

Darling,
you are not exempt from love.