The love i am looking for cannot be captured 

Through polaroids and thumbtacks stuck to an eggshell white wall

Signed with the date may 8th 2007 scribbled on its back

And carefully sealed in a seed paper envelope 

Sealed with vermillion wax 

Still hot and wet 

My eager and tactless hands are covered in burns that new friends while ask about 

And i will smile, pretending 

Not to remember 

The love i am looking for lights up my cerebellum like a loose firework 

The sparks indent the inner working of my mind 

The same way that steel strings do

When they dig into my finger tips 

Blistering and pleasingly painful

I go over each chord for hours until I can’t hear anything 

But the sound of your laugh 

I always wished someone would write me a song or a poem 

A physical manifestation indicative of feeling 

The love  I have seen smells like blood 

A rotting carcass under halogen porch lights 

Metallic and shiny underneath my fingernails 

From days of pushing and pulling like oxen

That carry stars upon their shoulders 

With no destination or design

They lift my cart of inhibition from its hinges 

To a deserted field of milkweed and phlox 

Protected from the sun’s deadly singe 

The love I am looking for is against reason promise, and peace

Persistent and willing and dependent on hope 

Like vines that wrap themselves tightly around banyan trees

Fiery and fervent leaking through the canopy

They drip down onto me like a sage syrup

That cannot be washed away 

It  buds like a rose surviving a summer storm

With rain showers that melt manmade walls to stardust and liquid concrete

Mangled and matted

Its vines twisted and thorny 

To stop and smell it might incite nosebleeds

And involuntary tears 

The love I’m looking for 

Cannot be found in the emergency waiting room

Under fluorescent light

And red waterlines

Or in an office skyscraper trapped under paper weights 

It is a halophyte

Rooted deep in Mangrove mud 

Covered in shipworms and salty oil 

I bring a fist of the earth to my mouth and bite down hard

It is surprisingly sweet

And eternally delicious