Saturday, November 21, 2015

Poem Series: Until I Do

UNTIL I DO
Liz Fink-Davenport

The thing about love is that I can never do it right. I do it too hard. I do it all awkward and gangly. Like two teens with braces kissing. I do it too brokenly. I don't do it. Then I do it to wrong places. I do it and it gets handed back to me. Or thrown at me. Or pressed down under someone's shoe and stuck a bit there like parking lot gum. I do it with fear and holding. I never do it. I do it all over the damn place. I'll not do it again. I promise. I messy do it. I do it and then it does me. I do it like a shotgun flare into the dark. I do it with quaking hands. I do it tearfully and close eyed and a bitten lip. I do it with my chest thrown open and a wolf cry to the moon. I do it in inside pockets. I do it with a swear that I'm not really doing it. I stop it. I stop it. I stop it. I screw it all up into the worst kind of ugly. I pick it apart like tangled necklaces. I find it. I hide it. I hold it overhead and dance naked around the fire with it. I put it in a box, in the dark, in a cupboard, in a house, that is sealed. I hold it. I rock it. I soothe it. I toss it like a baseball and never go search for it over the fence. I kill it. I hurt it. I strangle it until there is no breathe and no beating organ. I bury it. I mourn it. I birth it and I cry how beautiful it is. I tuck it into my breast when it is frightened. I say nasty words to it. Oh, how nasty. I tell it I would rather never have met it. Never have laid eyes on its face. I tell it I hate it. I don't mean it. And I do. I want it back. I beg for it. I try to make it drink the water I bring to it...but it's not thirsty. I pull it along like a mossy anchor and a rope. I misplace it. I make it be sorry it ever met me. Regret my face. I make it look me in the eye and then I'm the one that flinches. I start it. I start it. I start it again. I do love all wrong. I never get it right. I will not do it again. No. Never. Until. I do. Dammit. I do.

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