I mean in the best way possible that I am my own wife but
tonight, I wish that my heart could belong
in the palm of someone else’s hand. Or in the background drumming
of a band on a road towards nowhere. I am not scared
of losing you. I am scared of what I will do to get there.

My hair has been a hundred colors in the last year
all an in effort to displease the people who stared at me
at parties. It worked. Now I wear black lipstick. Now I open
glass bottles with my bare hands. You ask me why I have been
alone for so long. I tell you that there’s nothing wrong with me
and that isn’t a lie. I embroider psalms into notebooks.
I am a dull girl.
Won’t you kiss me?

And I am trying so hard to be
pretty, and soft, and homey,
but there are bombs under my fingernails and gun shells
in my tongue. And every war I’ve fought I’ve won.
I am trying so hard not to scare you, but I am a bomb.
So here I run with open arms. Here I run with every scar -
I am open. I cannot hide myself like other girls,
I am a broken arrow. I borrow lines from better poets.
I am too honest not to show it.

Know that no, I am not scared to lose you
but I am scared of scaring you with the kiss in my lips if I call you some day
and we both have nothing to say.