The Curbside Prophet

thrifted-wisdom:

by andrea gibson

The plan was to play hard to get, that’s right.
I wasn’t just gonna go
given’ myself away, I’m no easy catch.
Can you really see me in fishnets? No.
I always find myself slippin’ out the holes,
swimmin’ back out to sea.
I’d never been anybody’s sushi roll,
but she has lips like wasabi,
my eyes water every time we kiss.
Makes me wish we had a porch swing
and a little home.
Makes me wish I could right wrongs
instead of poems.

The heart is a bullet that’s terrified of blood,
love is a windshield wiper in a hurricane -
nothing is ever clear.
You mistake her name for the moon,
mistake porch lights for the stars
and sometimes they are.
Her constellations lead me home.
Ten thousand shades of open
and if there’s one thing in this world
I’ve ever known for sure it’s that this girl
is gonna crush me like a small bug,
leave me so fucking broken there’ll
be body bags beneath my eyes
from nights I cried so hard the stars died,
but I’m like, “go ahead, I’m all yours.”
I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean
during a lightning storm
cause I’d rather be left for dead than left
to wonder what thunder sounds like.

I’m not looking for someone to save me.
Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely
get you anywhere and I’ve got places I want to go
so break me in two,
peal back my ribcage and cover every page of my
heart with love poems that you will burn some day.
The most fertile lands were built by the hands of volcanoes
and I want to know what grows beneath the drone of
hallmark and roses.
I want your goodbye to feel like explosives,
your lips a burning building without fire escapes,
your hips the gates of hell if I know if heaven exists,
but this will do just fine.

And I want to feel you like life lines on the palms of
Jesus when nails went through.
Is that really, really creepy?
Just in case it is, let me also say that I want you
sleepy-eyed in the morning waking at my side
like a warm summer sky born from
so much softness the horizon cries every time
night fall comes to take you.
Let me also say that I want to make you sandwiches and soup
and peanut butter cookies, though
the truth is peanut butter is really bad for you
‘cause they grow peanuts in old cotton fields
to get the toxins out of the soil,
but hey, you like peanut butter and I like you.

Let me also say I’ve never seen anything more
gorgeous than you were that night,
the moon bending through the window blinds.
I told time by the light casting shadows across your face
while you told me this story:
My grandparents married for 63 years.
On the day my grandfather died he lay in bed
and said nothing but “love, love, love, love,”
then he puckered his lips and kissed my grandmother for the last time.

Love, love, love, love is like sunshine:
Sometimes you have to get burned
to know you were there and I want to know I’m here.
Every single part of me,
my heart open as the river’s eyes the first time it sees the ocean -
“My god look at those waves, listen to that thundering tide.”
Can you imagine anything more frightening?
Can you imagine anything more alive?

(via theraptorwhomurderedlove)