Love Poem: You'Re Beautiful
Allison Ballard Avatar
Written by: Allison Ballard

You'Re Beautiful

You're beautiful
I say to my faultless boy
holding him like a mother
my love cleansing all the trouble 
my fingers soft on his baby skin
and smooth forehead

You're beautiful- but you always change
You don't stay the same
You can't fake when you're asleep
and you terrorize me
when I see all my broken jewelry
a snapped shoulder strap
the button from my jeans
the violent remains 
of my worthy presentation
messier than my frizzy blonde hair
in which you tied knots with clumsy hands

Your sheets and I are stripped and stretched
in a sort of desperation
in a sort of hunt, or a game

I can see my name
never really mattered much
food is food when you're hungry
like hips and lips when it's dark
and "you're beautiful" is a cloud
dissipating
over the stoked fire of your flexing legs

My broken back feels less than
my broken heart that uttered 
strangely broken words
that may have suited another man well
one who could've painted me a picture
or only grabbed me with his happy eyes
who might have made my heart bare 
before my body
who might have said
"You're Beautiful"

Instead I sink into 
your foreign arms like
a fractured jaw
reigning in forever flooded eyes

I guess I'll never learn