To love you
Is to set aside my armor
To show you: come,
Here is the deepest room
In the furthest reaches
Of my house.
Here is my heart
and how to burn it down.
I grant you the same permission
I gave her:
Hurt me
if you will.
You will
all but destroy me.
Loving you -
loving her -
is rapt stare at a fire
I did not start;
you are sacred cleansing art -
catch on the altar
and we will collaborate on this part:
flames only tend
one direction.
To know you
is an inflection
of the tongue,
one I’ve never made before,
language I cannot yet articulate.
My mind is not young like yours:
you will speak this sooner than me.
But I will exhaust each breath
inside each lung,
before I live in a world where
we do not share
common ground or grammar.
You will watch me shed tears,
hide tears,
I will startle, stutter
stammer,
but meaning
is more stubborn than my weakness.
We will both be translated
before long.
We will both be changed.
We will both be spoken strong.
We will both be rebels against God.
We will both be wrong.