love

Sovereignty

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

If you tease me with this for long
I fear that you will guide me wrong—
inside my veins the blood burns hot
inside my brain images rot

Soothing as you appear to me
stinging my recent memory
you give much less than what you take
and haunt the hallows in your wake

I do not know why you appear
and in my thoughts are always near
you are a debt as Dunbar states
one who at no time hesitates

To remind me of your cruelty
your lack of faith, your sovereignty—
but I will not give in to you
for him, our love, I will cut through.

Eighth Grade Science

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I used to think that you and I were a covalent bond,
sharing our electrons in a Venn-diagram link
that could not be broken or shared with another atom.

But we are grown now, and I see the difference in us:
we are truly ionic, not connected in a way that we cannot break,
but handing electrons back and forth, giving and taking.

We are charged, sometimes positive, sometimes negative,
hovering around each other like fireflies in the forest,
our bond allowing us to gain strength from one another.

Concessions

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

From the Latin concedere, to completely yield

1999-2002

stop here and I will upsell you
a giant buttery tub as wide as a hug
a soda that weighs as much as your baby
so much candy you might puke later

but you’ll enjoy your theater experience
that much more because I suckered you in
because you yielded to your desires
and footed $25 more than what you paid for tickets

and as you hand me your card or cash
I’ll ignore the stench of BIB’s and
the slippery tractionless popcorn-filled floor
and the palm oil that permeates the air

smiling all the while as I earn my $7.50,
paying my way through college with this
thankless job, knowing that I can concede
to your audacity because one day I won’t have to.

2008-2010

my era of admission has come full circle
as step after step I tread as carefully as a crane
just like the paper ones that dangled,
pale blue and innocent, along the church aisles

now both of us have shed our naiveté
and the truth seeps from our souls
through black and white keyboards,
drunken words, and the wrath of darkness

in my mind I have seen both sides of this story
each one conceding to the other in a series
of twisted images that I can neither sleep through
nor accept when my eyes, paralyzed, pop open

yet, from this moment I recapture the past
and though I cannot change the path I led it down
I see you in the shadows as if for the first time
knowing that I can completely yield to our love.