I Break Like a Fever (Desireé Dallagiacomo)
I can’t hear anyone talk about love without thinking
plane crash. locked door. snapped matchsticks.
a choir of heartache. Every face, a costume of loss.
Trumpet voices in the second line marching band
out of my funeral home heart.
What I know about grief, I learned in a winter in New Orleans.
Nights I would drive the city, end up by some massive body of water.
Sob at the shoreline. Stare the beast in its face, and it didn’t give a shit
how loud I screamed. It roared back louder. It never stopped.
Not even when I did. If there is anything that breaking like a wave has taught me.
That grief has curb stomped into my teeth, it is that
When love leaves, it doesn’t always
shut the shotgun door on its way out.
The last time I left my heart wide open, the hurricane
in me got so bad the slamming of the stupid screen door
kept me up for months. I couldn’t stop pouring out my insides.
I couldn’t see the shoreline until I pealed my skin
out of bed, looked straight at it and said “Stupid door.
You’re so fucking loud. Would you quit it already?”
I didn’t know the carpenters in my heart until I needed ‘em.
For 3 months, my best friend called me every single morning
just to make sure I was still alive. Because sometimes
that is the hardest thing to do- just stay alive.
On this planet full of zombie hearts.
People walking around pretending to exist.
It looks so god damned easy to play along.
Listen for the people with the upturned palms whispering
“Here, take my sweater. It’s fucking freezing out there.”
You deserve to make it home. You compass. Waterfall smile.
Umbrella chest. Grand canyon elbows.
Ignore the radio static lost signal hearts
when all you want are directions back
to the lighthouse where your own love lives
through this god damned sea storm.
Keep swimming. The lighthouse. It’s there. And it’s worth it.
That kind of love only stays when it has to. And it stays. Every time.
My Mama folded laundry in the hospital that I was born in
so that I wouldn’t first see the world as some back road barn in Oregon.
I come from a heart made from sturdy hands.
A heart made to set sail. Ride the waves.
The storm is always thick. It’s always loud. The road home.
It’s quiet. Small. A warm you have to get used to. It’s a ship
made from everyone that ever said they loved you
and stayed when your heart slammed shut
so loud you could not say it back.
Sometimes, I am so spilling over with feelings
that I have to sit in my room with the lights off.
blankets pulled up over my head
so I don’t explode out all of my insides.
I am full. I am boiling over. I am fragile.
I am terrified to say that. To say that I am fragile.
I break like a bad habit. Like a fever. a windshield. I break like a wave.
Sometimes love doesn’t stay, but mother fuck when it does.
It is worth every fire extinguisher mouth that told you
that you were not enough. It’s worth all the people that
tried to put your loves honest flame out.
That confused your birthday candle kiss. Firecracker mouth.
For some blazing forest. torched chapel.
Let ‘em run out of you like a house up in flames.
They won’t be the first. They won’t be the last.
Pull the fire alarm. Let it rain.
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