So, I wrote this poem for an amazing guy...
There are men built to break you,
men equipped to break down
that which holds your heart hostage,
and men who are broken.
I’m not quite sure which you are.
All I know is that you have the smile
of one whose rib cage has seen better days.
Brother, tell me. Who hurt you?
She had the walk of a hurricane,
carried thunder and storm clouds in her palm,
left your mind reeling like a New Orleans’ backroad.
Love ain’t always beautiful,
doesn’t always come packaged in daffodils and peonies.
Sometimes love looks more like
the jagged edges of the smile of a man
who has pushed pain up the roughside of life’s mountain,
a modern-day Sisyphus.
She walked into your life
when your world was a whisper,
made siren of your silent spaces.
Her mama ain’t teach her to love
and leave quietly.
You fell for her brokenness,
told her that her cracks were what made her beautiful,
tried to piece together lilies and lies
until they resembled something that looked
like love.
Love ain’t always beautiful.
Sometimes love looks like two a.m.
and tears and falling apart.
She was half woman, half walking away.
And after a handful of half-hearted tries,
goodbye became as inevitable as breathing.
She was the beam on which you measured
what you got versus what you deserved.
She was slick,
your serpent and your apple
and you be Eve,
sin smeared across your smile.
Sometimes love ain’t
always naked in the fig garden.
Sometimes love looks like
covering up your ugly places
while innocence spills at your feet.
Maybe you hadn’t seen enough.
Maybe she had seen too much.
She walked like a shot of vodka,
left with all your yesterdays in her purse
and some of your tomorrows if you look close enough.
I know she hurt you.
But even in the cracks that she left behind,
love will manage to find a way to slip through.
Love ain’t always perfect.
But she is relentless.
She will always find a way.