Every Beautiful Thought (Riding Shotgun to the Sink)
What am I supposed to teach a child about love
when I cannot tell it apart from a forest fire?
When someone can let themselves into the body that is your home,
and still burn it to the ground?
I fear we come from a legacy that is always folding in,
but never out.
How do I tell you that there’s nothing here worth saving,
when you look at me like the answer to a question
you’ve nursed for a decade?
I fear we are separated by your faith and my self destruction,
the weight of all the things I never told you.
I’m something old forged anew
that longs to find comfort in your well knit bones,
the strange and quiet poetry of your breathing.
When you kiss me I fear I taste of that which makes me human,
iron and bone, gristle and fear,
the ghost of all my failures.
So if there’s only ever one thing you believe of me,
please let it be this.
There’s no higher power in your pain,
nor prayer to chase it all away.
I was never meant to be anyone’s lifeline
and I still don’t know what is scarier,
to be lost
or to be found.
