“Like a Book” by Michelle K.

And I can’t
help
but to run my fingers
down your spine
like you are my
favorite
book. But I still
cannot read you,
you are
your own language.
Your pages are
tired and torn,
but I want you,
I want it all.

“We Need a New Word for ‘Love,’ It’s Overused” by Lora Mathis

I keep telling you ‘I love you’
and it comes out as an apology.
I’m sorry. You want it to be bolder, bigger, less pathetic.
‘Love’ has become a fighting word for us.
You argue that you love me more. I don’t object.
I turn over in bed, sob into the pillow, pity myself.
I mumble it back to you because you
like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth.
We’ve turned caring for each other into a duty dance
that’s cheapened ‘love.’
It has become another way of apologizing
as you roll your eyes and say, ‘Sorry, I forgot to buy milk’,
a habit with every evening’s, ‘Night, love you too’,
a promise we keep breaking:
‘Of course I won’t, I love you’,
a lie.
It hits me that we no longer know what it means
when you slap me across the face and instantly,
I tell you I love you. I can’t help it.
I have spent months associating it with this much pain.
My insides are bullet-holed basins where the past goes to die.
I feel death when you stand close.
Stay away from me.
I love you.

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver, from “Pobiddy, Georgia”

“she was, finally, perfectly finished, perfectly heartbroken, perfectly wild.”

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

“no poet has ever thought love was soft”

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

“in astronomy class, the muse urania angrily watches a panel of
men talk about the wonders of the stars as thought they created
them”

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

“but there is no god listening to them
because they broke the windows
and god is focusing on the repairs”

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

‘Do you love me?’ you whisper.
‘how dare you ask me that?’ i reply.
We both know i’ve been yours for the longest time.
it isn’t right that humans can cause this hell.

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

I love a boy who kisses me so solid
i can’t stand up after.
i’m not going to wait.
i’m going to descend into him
the first chance i get.

Untitled by Selma Deera, from Letters From Medea

‘tell me some facts about yourself,’ he asks.
‘sure,’ she says.
she knows he doesn’t really want to know about her.
not mentally, anyway.
so she gives him what he wants.
‘i have many facts,’ she tells him.
‘here are some—
‘my father loved my brother more than he loved me.
my father loved using his fists more than he loved using his mouth.