Real Love

Sometimes I write poetry.

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I can talk to you all day about real love

Real love is that thing you feel in the pit of your stomach

It’s that rush of blood

Away from my extremities

Straight to your heart

And your genitals

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Real love is that thing that makes you stop in your tracks

Stop and stare

A crash

A boom

You can’t look away

A volcano

A hurricane

And for one very fleeting moment

You are caught in the eye of the storm

You are small and safe in its hole of silence

And then the destruction comes for you

Once again

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Real love is made up of the pictures

Of him and her

They don’t break

They merely multiply

Their children are sharp-edged

It’s easy to mistake the process

As breaking

But that implies that they are now less than what they were

They are merely multiplying

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That real love

When it multiplies and splinters will cut you

From the belly up

That real love

Is true and beautiful

Like a sunset that will burn your corneas

It is rare and sweet

Like foxglove and peaches

That real love will move you to move mountains

And then drown yourself in its rivers

That real love will make you turn away from the actual real things

It will make you kneel before an unholy afflatus

A siren who never called you

It will beckon you to believe

That this time will be different

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Real love isn’t true love

For you cannot build an empire upon it

You do not wed this love

You merely create when its beacon is lit

You follow where it might lead

And pray that the trail is forever winding

Pray for a kind incubus

Pray for an end to the noise

To the music

To the ambitions

Or just to end

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Real love can do things

It’s never stagnant

It boils and burns

Scorching the hairs on your face

Like leather and embers

It’s burning and death

The skin of of another wrapped right around you

No

You are the skin

He knows your name like he knows the cow’s name

You are just skin

But you are now his skin

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Real love isn’t less

It’s just different

And all I’ve ever known

It’s a madness that called to you once

And now

Now you call to it every day

Now you scream into the void

With the dimmest hope of a faint echo

In return