"The winter I told you, 'I think icicles are magic'
you stole an enormous icicle from a neighbors shingle
and gave it to me as a gift.
I kept it in my freezer for seven months
until the day I hurt my foot.
I needed something to reduce the swelling.
Love isn't always magic,
Sometimes, its just... melting.
Or its black and blue
where it hurts the most.
Last night I saw your ghost
pedaling a bicycle with a basket
towards a moon as full as my heavy head
and I wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like ET with my glowing heart glowing right through my chest
and my glowing finger pointing in the direction of our home.
Two years ago, I said 'I never want to write our break up poem'.
You built me a time capsule full of big league chew
and promised to never burst my bubble.
I loved you from our first date at the batting cages
when I missed 23 balls in a row, and you looked at me
like I was a home run in the ninth inning of the world series.
Now, every time I hear the word 'love', I think 'going, going'.
The first week you were gone, I kept seeing your hand wave goodbye
like a windshield wiper in a flooding car
and the last real moment I believed the hurricane would let me out alive.
Yesterday, I carved your name into the surface of an ice cube
then held it against my heart 'til it melted into my aching pores.
Today, I cried so hard, the neighbors knocked on my door
and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.
I told them I left my sweet tooth in your belly button.
Love isn't always magic.
But if I offered my life to the magician
If I told her to cut me in half
So tonight I could come to you whole and ask for you back
Would you listen for this dark alley love song
For the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies.
I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now it doesn't matter how well I say grace
if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat.
So this is my wheat field, you can have every acre love.
This is my garden song, this is my fist fight with that bitter frost.
Tonight, I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp
that we danced beneath the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as I sang 'maybe I need you'
off key, but in tune
Maybe I need you the way that big moon needs that open sea.
Maybe I didn't even know I was here 'til I saw you holding me.
Give me one room to come home to.
Give me the palm of your hand.
Every strand of my hair is a kite string
and I have been blue in the face with your sky
Crying a flood over Iowa so you mother will wake to Venice.
Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window
for every wall inside my chest.
Now, my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible.
It is the one verse you can trust.
So I'm putting all of my words in the collection plate
I am setting the table with bread and grace.
My knees are bent like the corner of a page
I am saving your place."
-Andrea Gibson, "Maybe I Need You"
mkp.
