Darling I am sorry
If I ever make loving you
Sound like a chore
It is a job
I have begged for
Labored for
I will sweat my brow
For just one of your kisses
There is no labor of love
Too large
Take my hours
My rough hands
It is not too much
You could never be
More than enough

I cannot ask for love
But the question sits
Like a loaded gun
Behind my teeth

I will memorize my memories of you
Like a scholar of scriptures
Say your name like an amen
My dreams of you are like prayers
That I beg god to make reality
Let me place my kisses
On your forehead
Like a wax seal
That I may seep
Into your thoughts

This is my love
My love

You did so well
With the lot you were given
Quenched your thirst
On a hundred short straws

She took it
A minute at a time
So that now
I can enjoy hours, days, moments

I have shed this carcass a thousand times
When I dig my nails into my skin
It is thicker than before
I tear away at her
Until I am raw
Open me up
So that I may pour out
It is the only way

Lay next to me
While I go
To the bottom of my mind
Breathe in helium, oxygen, moonlight
Consciousness, floating to the ceiling
I am dreaming, lucid
I am watching the world
In third person, in black and gray
Small matters of the mind
Busy bodies following patterns
Mouths reciting scripts
It is mundane
When I looking through, glass
Panel of my own mind
First person
That is when I see, horrors
Technicolor
I bare it badly as it were gospel
These nightmares an unholy conquest
Against my consciousness

I am living in this body still
I do not remember what she was like
Before the bombs
When she was a beautiful city
All I know now is the ash in the soil
The stumps of the trees
The basements exposed
There is beauty in it to be sure
She will never be
What she was before

I cannot say I am sorry for her
Because I do not know her
She is only a distant memory
Like the sun on the fading horizon

We have been rebuilding
I did not know
It would be so difficult
To build new buildings
On an old foundation
So raw, so vulnerable, so exposed
I am not the one at war
I am the village after the raid
I am the city after the bombs
I am the one who prayed
That I would see the lighthouse
Before my stern kissed the shoals

Perhaps the bombs will come again
There is no warning