I
want to caress your face with sandpaper
in
order for you to understand, once
and
for all, that my poems were never
meant
to please you, were never meant to
make
you blush in the darkness of your
air
conditioned room, were never meant
to
soothe you, were never meant to confuse
you—because
love is not the same thing as
romance
and romance is not the same thing
as
romanticized love and poetry is not the
same
thing as a love story that has been broken
down
into lines: it is not about efficiency,
and
its effectiveness appears and disappears in
unpredictable
intervals—the way lust operates
within
the body and between bodies.
I
want to caress your face with a piece of paper
where
all the things wrong with the world
are
written on it so that you might see how
love
is often triggered by the things you hate, that
love
is, in many cases, the feeling that compels
you
to make changes.