To Have without Holding

                                                Learning to love differently is hard,
                                                love with the hands wide open, love
                                                with the doors banging on their hinges,
                                                the cupboard unlocked, the wind
                                                roaring and whimpering in the rooms
                                                rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
                                                that thwack like rubber bands
                                                in an open palm.

                                                It hurts to love wide open
                                                stretching the muscles that feel
                                                as if they are made of wet plaster,
                                                then of blunt knives, then
                                                of sharp knives.

                                                It hurts to thwart the reflexes
                                                of grab, of clutch; to love and let
                                                go again and again.  It pesters to remember
                                                the lover who is not in the bed,
                                                to hold back what is owed to the work
                                                that gutters like a candle in a cave
                                                without air, to love consciously,
                                                conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

                                                I can’t do it, you say, it’s killing
                                                me, but you thrive, you glow
                                                on the street like a neon raspberry,
                                                you float and sail, a helium balloon
                                                bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
                                                on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
                                                as we make and unmake in passionate
                                                diastole and systole the rhythm
                                                of our unbound bonding, to have
                                                and not to hold, to love
                                                with minimized malice, hunger
                                                and anger moment by moment balanced.