Love Poem: To Be the Earth That Surrounds Him and Settles In His Hands.
Jeanmarie Marchese Avatar
Written by: Jeanmarie Marchese

To Be the Earth That Surrounds Him and Settles In His Hands.

I'm tying my wrists across the way he used to kiss me, back to bedposts and marking bruises


that resemble


February's


hands....


He bites his nails and PACES


left foot right and cry through telephone lines that


bite me...


He's terrified of losing me, of forgetting how I rested my lips upon his wounds in March


and my breath inhaled his soul, now he's leaking out of cuts I tried to heal


and here, here I have footsteps all across April


can't I scream? Can't I


just


scream?




I hear his fingers slipping across concrete, his heart is breaking, he's breaking


and I bleed every time he bites his tongue, I can't curl into this and hide beneath his chin


he mistakes the gnashing of teeth for the satisfaction of my appetite, he's blind to
frustration and I'm



CHOKING



still, I can't absolve him of his guilt, I'm having trouble with my heart this time


I'm suffocating on our past


and every


footstep


tears me, I know...


I know...


how to crumble and I think I'd love to be the dirt that sits underneath his nails just so
I could


feel


his tongue.




Don't...


I want to scream and watch Florida and Northern Pennsylvania smash in the sky


I want their lightning to strike me so I burn, I want him to capture the scent of my curls


from somewhere seeping through the cracks of his walls


I want him to see me, warped, my knees


crooked


my ankles teasing elbows, I want him to KNOW


the tears of April and what she would give to


SMASH us together one more time


so I can see it snow, so I can capture the originality of his cruelty


on my lonely tongue


as he scrapes concrete


to pass the hours in which he's terrified


to set me


free.