Learn

The day we met, you taught
me what the word         sultry
really meant and I promised
to devour you like the lines
of my favorite poem – to consume
you like the notes of a song
that moves me in a
way that makes me cry

(even though I’ve told you
before that my tear ducts were
taped shut by my own doing).

There were things you knew by heart,
and things I taught you;  like how
I like strawberries dipped in chocolate
(even though I can’t eat them in public)
and how I got that scar on my stomach
and how I pull bodies to me like
sheets that keep me warm at night
but only manage to keep myself

covered until the sun comes up
in the morning, and how I’m
still mourning the parts of me
I leave unwillingly on strangers’ skin
and how I used to be an optimist
before I became a depressed realist
and how the masochist in me
seems to have found a safe

haven in the way you avoid
eye contact even when your fingers
are kissing mine under the blanket
and how when you asked me to leave
my hand behind before I got on
a plane, I confused it for another
part of my anatomy.
And I would ask you not to expect much

from me but there’s so much
I want to give you –
and you say,
“I want to be like you for a day,
just so I can know how it
feels like to be numb without
having to take my medication“.

But I feel it all.