You don’t know what love is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river.
How to wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean.
This love even sits up and blinks; amazed,
she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she’ll try to eat solid food.
She’ll want to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear.
You know where she’s headed, you know she’ll wake up
with an ache she can’t locate and no money
and a terrible thirst.
So to hell with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube.
Cover me in black plastic. Let the mourners through.
Kim Addonizio
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