benediction i [you love everything]

“you love everything,” Apathy told me once

as we languished under the sun’s watchful eye,

and Hate nodded its head in agreement.

well I can’t help it, I was born

cursed with the longing to touch and be touched,

a longing that connects me to my ancestors

and all the previous lovers of the world;

History calls me at night to tell me

I’m not the only one who has gone through

the sorrow of wanting to be merged fully with someone

only to find that you, tragically, remain just as whole.

if you’d cared enough to get your hands dirty and

open me up,

you would have found

that there is a softness in my chest

always threatening to implode.

I feel love inside me like an infected wound

and I know it’s going to kill me before it could save me.

I surrender. Logic says it’s suicide—that friend of mine

has always been too blunt—but anyway,

I have grown weary of carefulness.

I am sick to death of being reasonable,

so let me love anyway.

let it fester.