This Is How You Know Your Love Is Truly Here To Stay

My love has
sometimes looked
like a broken-open jaw.
It has the swing of something
that wishes to tell you
where your feet stand in
relation to the sun,
or the moving cars, or
the floor of the closet; all the
things that have tempted
to swallow us.
My ‘I love you’s’ have come out
like blood on the kitchen floor.
The burn of bleached
linoleum stays, like the last
prayer to a slain god, on the pink,
soft of my tongue.
I don’t stop learning
the way your boots sound
on the hard wood.
There are birds outside our window
who have not stopped
trying to peck their way in
all this time.
After all this time.