Dear Poetry, I Draw Damage

Dear Poetry,

I draw damage to me. No matter how the story starts, ends some same. Now when they close in on me, I play how long till I can see you for what you are. The poem I wrote last week has a hole in it. When I look at it taped to the wall, the white space is screaming. It's my heart. It's the wrecked space of what it should be. Or it's the warped space of what it has become. It is so quiet between the end of one word and the next syllable sharpening.                                                                                                              What they give me is silence. and what they don't know: I have enough silence to fill lifetimes. I say thank you anyway for the lesson and keep to the page. Come here where you tender. I pay the fee to cross with what I break apart, how artful to come asunder. You never say you love me, which is safer than all lovers who say it and not one meaning. They think they can handle language in front of me, the way they think they can handle me. We are inside one another, and I don't need to hear you coax me, love. When I wake up, the poem is on the wall, the hole in the text is visible across the room, the guesswork is gone and my heart doesn't have to wonder where you'll take me. There's no hope for girls like me. We signed off & what you get is a revolving door of lovers where only half are even good for a poem. It takes an incredible amount of damage to make it sing; I never tire of packing my bags to wander. I will go so far for you, so far under: Can you see how the light dances. I was trying on this narrative of being human for you; it's been nothing but disaster. I'm near the edge looking for escape routes, but we all know you took death's caress from me too.


Megan