My Heart in the Way

I have loved you more than anything.

Your love was a tree.
I was afraid of heights, yet I climbed.
I climbed.
I reached the top
Only for your branches to push me back.

I wish they had pushed me away, not back.
Back means I had a place before you.
And I didn’t.

I was banished.
I was not sent back.

May your hands never know peace.
May your hands always tremble.
May your hands never hold anything again
After holding me.

My heart is still in your palm.
Your future cannot pass it.

Have I told you about my falling?
My whole body turned to wool,
And you were a bed of thorns,
Tangled.

Every day you made us not speak
Was a battlefield
Where my mother’s tribe and my father’s tribe fought,
And I was asked to choose.

I did not want to fight.

I wanted to paint a kiss behind your ear.
I wanted to crawl into the folds of your skin
Like tissues in an old woman’s coat.
I wanted your chest wall and mine so close
I could hear neighbors,
Not drums of war.

That is what you gave us.

You made me fight.
You made me kill my mother
After she killed my father.

Now I am alone
In a field of bodies
I poured myself into.

May your hands, my beloved, become wood.
May you never curl your fingers around anything again.
I hope one day
I bring you
A box of matches.