a letter about love.

I left my church days and hopelessly droll prayers in a box I brought home from work. I left it on the corner of 40th and Adams. Next to the freeway and the park, on the sidewalk out in front of the house where I lived in what felt like a normal life.

My heart followed at my feet and decided to stay so I promised I would be back when the breaking was fixed. I remember thinking, one day I wouldn’t need to buy the bruised fruit anymore just because it was on sale. I would be back if I could just learn to stop and walk around, instead of through, the destruction I stumbled upon my entire life.

I would be right here though, always.

I ran far enough where the skeleton of my memories rarely visit me and when they do it’s only because I let them in order to dismember, dissect and then sew them back together. I don’t let the sutures dehisce; there are no more flowers, or mysteries or fairytales hidden in my flesh.

One day, I happened to I find you on a corner wearing newly shined shoes and an Eddie Haskell smile. You were drunk and wishing I was the kind of girl who needed something from you. I listened as you made opulent promises and even though I didn’t believe you I let you feed me tangerine slices while we sobered up.

You never stop long enough to be examined. You never stand far enough so that I can see you clearly. You take the air and fill it with perfume. You push and you cower. I am full, taken over, overwhelmed but most importantly I am alive.

The two of us, we couldn’t be more different. I pretend not to notice but I watch you impress the world with your colored wings and your small hollow bones that allow you to fly. My kind bird. I love you and because I love you I worry and the worry makes me rail against the softness that has allowed me to so carelessly care for someone so carefree.

Sometimes it seems as though it is only when your violent knuckles are punching against the leather steering wheel or your angry words are littered into my hair that you are distant enough to understand. I see unmistakably then. You are crying and I sit there sighing and silent and smoking cigarettes. You could never be as cruel as I am the obvious stoic.

I hold on as if letting go would mean you are not good enough or gentle enough or passionate enough. As if our separate history could not keep us apart. I hold on for my place to belong. For the small shelter I am able to provide. A place that is ours for now in a life that takes at any minute.

I am not a girl who questions if I have loved too long, too hard, too much or too little. I do not apologize or offer forgiveness. I do not scream and throw fits or placate and appease you.

I love like a cripple who has survived past the fall. I love like a starving man who has had the last of his bread stolen. I love like a vagabond jumping another train without knowing where its headed.

My kind bird,
you love me back.

You love me back as if this is good enough.