i keep tellin myself you don't have to feel that way, you just gotta find the right thing, the right song, the right man and every time I've been on the couch at the fair, on the floor with an arm draped around me and his fingers tracing bittersweet intentions on my side-- I'm thinking of theΒ Β back of your head of you fingers with the cuticles you never pushed back of the birthmarks beneath your arms and of a girl's body that i've never seen naked
because i collapse in on myself and say it's not time and scientists say that black holes are things from which light cannot escape but I am going to let it matter so when he leans in for a kiss and i see your hands on her hips shoulders bunched up in the cold you're standing out in the snow truck growling in the driveway I say it's okay, i am not out to bandage the wounds that need to breathe I told her I am just going to let it hurt
i am just going to let it matter.
(c) Brooke Otto
written for a poetry slam, i don't like it until i read it out loud.