Is it you I love or is it the idea
That I need something or someone to cling to?
Is that why I say its an accident?
Describe you pushing me out the
Car door with the adjective
Gently.
I tell my mom, my friends,
You didn’t mean it, you
Didn’t want to hurt me.
Is that why I said to myself
I could be better?
More understanding, wear more makeup,
Be more playful, more exciting.
The mores added up, they became words
Blurred in the text of a book I couldn’t read.
I needed a decoder ring, and if I found it
And became more…
You would love me.
That’s stupid, you can’t force love.
But no one’s ever hacked the password
Of all my secret thoughts, dreams, desires
As you have.
Various men have tried, charged up with adjectives,
Looking for the right word to get me in bed.
Beautiful, sexy, awesome, all gaining the same response:
Access denied.
You were the only one who said you’d love me
Without those things.
That’s why it is so hard to figure out
What I did to make you hit me,
To block me from your love.
I still love you.
I knew I loved you since that night
You curled up in the middle of the parking lot of the
Gas station on University Avenue,
Sucking your thumb and
Telling me it was ok to be different.
But I needed the conventions.
Love took second place to school, to work, to friends.
Reality did its role call and you were off sick
Again.
They had to drop you from the class of grownups,
A big W on the sheet of life.
And I was in the front seat
Getting an A.
Letting them tell me what way to format my life,
Twelve point font, double spaced.
I love you, or maybe I just want someone to love.
But either way,
It’s been fun and I’ll miss you until I find
Someone else to walk with me along the grey road
Of a conventional life they tell me to have.