I Try Not To
by Lisa Zaran
I love how you look
When the smoke gets in your eyes
And the noise from the crowd
gets in your ears
I love how the harmony
Of your voice strikes
Against my sternum
So close
I can feel my heart quake
in its hole
I love how you move
Like a painter toward his easel
As the nude model waits
I love how you rest
Your finger between your lips
when you’re thinking
I try not to love you
But my heart has a life of its own.
***
Free At Last
If I told you straight out
that I love you,
you wouldn’t understand.
For I am just an average
girl and you are a temple
among men.
It is impossible for an average
girl to get to the heart
of a temple
let alone inside
its front door.
If I told you that we
are only the words we speak,
nothing more,
and the blood faith of that
relationship we hold with
our words,
perhaps I could convince myself
I don’t love you.
I have never loved you.
***
You Could
You could quench my worst thirst
You could come at me looking
and I would find a thousand cups
of water in your eyes
and drink them all
You with your bright and steady
flaxon breath and mild lips
I could tear into your love
rip it open with one bite
You could stand on a streetcorner
of my burned down and abandoned
neighborhood and I would move back
live in the gutter, sleep on the black
grass in the cemetery yard.
In the cinema of your movements
you could annihilate me
fill my body with flames
fill my womb with flowers
Have you no sympathy knowing
all you could do and yet you don’t.