Love

Sometimes when I read Hugo, or Hemmingway,

or look at old photographs of Dazai

I wonder

what must have it been like

to be an object of love of these men.

These men who loved with honesty, and

vulnerability

and whole heartedly.

Men who could drown themselves at the word of Tomie.

Truthfulness is a sin, says Dazai,

and just like that I become a sinner,

a lover, a criminal, a cruel woman –

aren’t all the same really?

The ripened coffee burns my throat

my chest, and my bowels

so I claim myself to be addicted to it.

Love for men has incinerated my soul,

so tell me Father, how could I ever resist?

Monsters keep coming back from dead

urging that I speak with them

urgently,

aren’t I mad to be talking to corpses?

I need someone to distinctly define it for me

the idea of love.

I need to know exactly what it is so that

I stop

cutting and cutting more and more of myself

for each body that deceives my heart for my body

under the shade of love.

I will love like Hemmingway, and I will love like Poe

but the tragedy of every beautiful poem

is that it has always come from a

broken heart.