self-love

8 letters can’t hold

what it actually

is

yeah I can try,

stretch its meaning

through metaphors, similes,

and every little tool

in the literary toolkit

which I groaned at

since middle school

till now

but “Self-love’s a sun hopping between

life & death -- its tomb & womb

squared where your chest and belly rests”

doesn’t mean much,

might mean something to whoever wrote it

or for one or two pairs of eyes

or for none at all

yet still I try, and link

polar opposites with ampersands

& rend spines of sentences in ha--

border these fonts in magenta

and indigo, stroke them broad,

and hide underneath the lines

that didn’t make it through

instead of flat out saying

"Self-love's fucking hard

because how the hell

do you love someone

you really, really know;

and even then

tugging along beside it

is shame dense as the earth's core

while it crawls and coats over

each flaw and fault

like some starving gas"

because how the hell

does that sound any good

to the ears