iridescence

Poets are always painters

Lovers are always fighters

The Pope couldn’t stop me from holding your hand while the angels are singing

And, buddy, I’d love to see him try

You’re a sin I won’t recant

They’ll say I’m a heretic, but I’d throw myself from the roof of the Wittenberg Cathedral, look John Calvin right in the eye and tell him I was predestined to love you

I was put on this Earth to be your canvas

Paint me in soft pastels or black and blue acrylics swirling like the deep ocean

Dip a clean brush in new paint and call me your own masterpiece

You know I’d never disagree

Because really you made me, I’m made of you

Beauty is fleeting, but you are forever

I will die, but this love will live on

Swear it, I’ll be six feet under, and they still won’t have buried me deep enough

I’ll carve every promise I ever made you on my headstone

Until my own name is covered up, and that, too, is yours if you’ll have it

Burn me, and with my dying breath, I’ll be screaming your name

My cries will echo in their ears until it drives them insane

When they’re at the pearly gates, I hope the angels’ trumpets sound like a lover scorned, sound like me, sound like us

Every time I step in a puddle and make it deeper, I am saying, “I was here, I lived, you can’t erase me”

Every twig that snaps under my careless feet is a relic proving I was here and I loved you

They can’t hide that

They can rewrite my words, smother history until it’s coughing up lies

But they’ll never change you and me

Every word whispered into the void my cracked, bleeding lips is proof of my existence

And they cannot mention me without addressing the simple known fact that I love you and have always belonged to you