The God of Love Never Says It’s Complicated
You are not Our first crush who ever spent
time on a court bench, prison toilet, or probation.
Your dented hood just makes Us wonder,
Is that where your boyfriend’s body bounced
from the car into a patch of bushes?
You say, I wasn’t even drunk, but blinded,
stated mildly, matter of fact and of record.
You take responsibility. Remorse is harder. Now
you’re sad that you can’t even visit West Virginia
where your mother bakes buttermilk
pie every day for you. We are sad too.
We like fucking you. We fucking like you
more each day and We’re sad to be moving away,
which, while eating lunch with you today seems
impossible. Did you notice how your Carolina blue
shirt spotlights your ivy-mist eyes? Your smile
will not answer this question. We’d like to paint it,
all that you wear when you are on a feeding
frenzy, when We feed you from Our body
and hold you like the emperor penguin
guards his egg. Your legs are hurting you today.
Fifty miles a week you walk because you cannot
drive. Your walk is wobbly, and We want to lay
you on your back again before We race
our sapphire sedan toward the sunrise place,
where ocean and lighthouse are skyline,
salt marsh and rotten algae smell mingle with
gull and foghorn sounds, the places We call
Home. Sometimes meaning ‘where We live,’
sometimes meaning ‘far away.’ In that same sense
We use the word Lover
to mean you.