Falling in love taught me more
about faith than any priest ever could.
When I look at you I know
all the ways my soul touches the earth.
I look into the mirror and see my eyes,
so old and deeply grounded,
yet with roots shy of twenty years old.
I am wrinkly hands and impulsive actions,
I am missing teeth and the belief in the tooth fairy,
I am the wilting rose and the shiny dew-coated seed.
If time is a concept based upon
distance, then my soul is
as old as the distance between me and you.
And I can dive deep down in my pockets,
and pull up, in my hand,
all the worlds I loved and lost you in.
And I can swim 10,000 leagues
under my anatomy, and pull up,
from my gut, the feeling I know
to be true when I see you.
And I can't tell if the lesson I
am meant to learn is that I need
to stop loving you, or that I need
to love myself more than I love you.
But when you tell me to give up on you,
the hair on the back of my neck stands up;
no, no, no, it's not supposed to be this way.
And it is with jagged fingernails and red lipstick,
that I dare you to prove me wrong,
but all you do is smile,
and give me less reasons to miss you,
and more reasons to cry,
and more doubt to drink in,
and less hope to have,
and, finally,
another life in which I loved and lost you.
