Love Poem: Let Me Wash Your Feet
Matt Caliri Avatar
Written by: Matt Caliri

Let Me Wash Your Feet

Let’s pretend I know how to tell the secret.
The secret of our lives.
Like children running mad into each other.
Like bank exchanges in line.
Finally at the window,
And no one understands a thing.

The mind that forgot me has made up a new name.
I was a flower until the age of yesterday.
And we forget that some people haven’t learned how to say please.
The word “please.”
I'm trying to help a child pronounce the word, “puh-leeee-zzz…”

And that’s all he wants to do.
So that he can make bubbles
And watch them float up into the sky.
And stim off them.
Riddled with tumours, his brain does ecstatic flip-flops 
As the world makes glee visible and soluble in his hands.
His tiny baby hands…

He’s 15-year-old.
That’s all he wants to do.

Who am I to stop him?
Where and when do you resist love?

So you slowly remove all the licenses…
And everywhere you step is new territory.
And with every terrifying day you are glad.
The flower wailing and writhing in the wind
Awaits the sun and within it it basks...
The causal pulse returns.