Young Love

This is the revised version, and also the first poem in my final portfolio for workshop. More from the portfolio soon...

Young Love

 

I.

Stitch a marigold behind your ear,

     dollface,

   and  jump in.

The borders of my body blur with the river stones. Mud

floods my ear canals,

and it will rush inside you too, if you let your boots

   sink you down.

I never wanted to whistle you a love song, but you are

part of my backyard now,

so how can I not worship your every snail and pike and thistle?

             Let me start with your spine, sighing over

                                                                          every little notch.

            Let me lick the sweat

off your thighs

             where your sunburn ends

                                                under your shorts. 

            I’ll taste the veins in your ankles                                     

                                    and the toothpick-size hole

                           in your heart wall                                   

         that spurts blood

                                   between cavities that should be separate.   

From there I’ll move to your spleen

and marvel its ability to destroy

                                             your used-up

                               mixed-up    blood cells.           

Don’t mind the prodding, doll,

    or the scalpel—

        it’s only the river leaving its twine stitches,

                      sewing up those courtyards I could never leave

                                                                                   undestroyed.                                    

 

             II.

Girl stands knee-high in the Mississippi,

 spine like railroad tracks.

She searches for flat stones to skip,

                                    searches for stones to flatten

            pressing them against the thick

              scar tissue

     on her abdomen and tongue.   

 

She glares at the sun like it’s a half-naked boy 

                                      —his reflection is all over the place,

                        churning up too much water for skipping stones

                                                                                  or kissing snails

  or sleeping through the night without his stitches pricking into her side.

 

Don’t be so cruel, she says.

Don’t step on my thistles, he says.

 

            III.

Boy licks her river-wet thighs

                                                           Why don’t you taste

like pike? he licks

                              in sticky cursive.

He sculpts the skin around her leg

                                                            searching for hints of fin

                  but finds only freckles

and skin peeling off in flecks. 

Boy paints scales on her calves

                  connecting the freckles like kites tangled in trees.

He flays a fish while it’s still squirming

                        and pastes its green scales on her legs

with mud and spit.                                    She squirms away,

            throwing herself back into the river

Why don’t you taste

         like a human? she stares.

Hold still, he licks.

                        Let me unhook your lip.

                                                                    Let me kiss it.

 

IV.

When I first met you, I watched you carve yourself

        out of the riverbed

            out of that deep red clay. Newly born, you

      scraped the ashes off your neck and asked me to kiss it.

 

But there was a spider crawling on it,

 so I bit open your jugular               

to drown the spider.

I think you may have drowned a little too,

                        but at least those legs curled up on themselves.

 

If spiders didn’t bite, I’d have kissed you.

If thistles didn’t pin my soles to the earth, I’d run now

and wrap my legs around you. I’d let you lick them

   even though they’re burnt and bloody

                                    and teeming with red ants

                                                                                    that bite.    

Our mouths

bite too, 

despite this thing we call love        

           and your blood runs

                   down my ankles until ants pool at my feet.                

           

Darling, I’m not trying to wash you off my legs

                in this river, I’m just standing

        in the current because I want to be inside

                    something I can’t see the end of.

 

V.

Girl floats on her back, marigolds all around her

                        and one thistle on her chest

                                                where her heart makes it quiver.

Boy wades in, trying to use pike for stepping-stones,

            but he slips and swallows a marigold.

Girl rushes to kiss it out of him, but when she bends to his mouth

            he coughs out ants           instead of petals.

                         She pushes away,

pushes him downstream

                   and watches as the river carries him to Louisiana. 

 

Send me a postcard covered in camellias, she calls,

                        or a vile of salt when you first taste the ocean.

 

What if I love New Orleans more than you? he hollers back.

            Then I guess you’ll have to kiss the dirt and not return my letters.

   

Boy floats on his back, resting his palms

                                    on the stitches across his flanks.

 

Girl lays down on the riverbank, resting her palms

                                    on the stitches across her flanks.