i don't want to love you like this {poem}

I don't want to love you like this.

I don't want to play games with sensuality,
lingering too long with every touch,
aware of the power in my fingertips
as they trace your skin
beneath your clothing-
knowing I could remove them all with this one coy finger.

I don't want to look for answers in how your body
embraces mine,
translate your sighs as promises
you never meant to keep.
It is so very convincing, you leaning into me
and perhaps if I lean back
you'll believe in this surface love of mine.

A love that would rather feel your arms
than hear your words.
That wants to kiss your lips to stop
you from asking questions.
Stop checking in with me and press into me--
that way I can choose what I want to hear
through what I feel.

That way I can continue to be deceived
by this thing I call love.
If ignorance is bliss than
I am strung out on lust,
high off an idea
that the longer you hold me
the longer I can hide.

But you see me.
You see that I am afraid
not of loving you
but what it might mean to let you love me.
What I might have to give.
--give up--
What I would have to share with you
for you to truly see me.
Oh the weight of my heart is so much heavier
than your entire body on mine.

I don't want to love you easy,
I want a much more fragile nakedness.
I want more than just to want you,
I want to know you.
I want to be more distracted by your
integrity than I am by
how I know you will feel;
to see your thoughts as response
to your heart.
To let you see all that you cannot touch
and touch so sweetly
all that you cannot see.
Yes--
I want to love you in ways
I don't yet know how.



As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/i-want-to-love-you-poem/

i am committed to you {poem}

I am committed to you.

God, just the thought of that
used to terrify me--
bind me in breathlessness
strangling any amount of
freedom my heart
thought it would lose
in loving only you.

Young, ignorant heart.
It knew not the vastness,
the immense capacity it has
to love--
that to give it to you
was not a limitation at all
but the purest release into loving.

It feared what it might miss out on,
who else's heart might match
its rhythm; who else's love
could seep into the contours
of its wounds--
unhealed scars from battling
Love itself.

But it is ready now.
More patient.
Reactions swell like
rich ocean waves
only to crash and collect
themselves
back into the sea.
My heart now knows
the pattern of passing fear
and remains free; unarmed.

Oh what freedom there is in
love, knowing now
it needs nothing in return,
is bound only be its own intentional
propensity to feel.
This heart is committed to you
without expectation,
without conditions.
It knows that your love
is not the same as its own,
and does not search yours
to lend it purpose.

My heart is committed to you
in its honest,
sweetly simple
commitment to love itself.



As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/committed-to-love-poem/

Hold me {poem}

Hold me.

Wrap your thick,

capable arms around me

and without words 

ask me not to leave.

Gather me in you

to remember how safe it is here.

Warm.

A fire prepared to combust at the whisper

of breathe into a 

neglected contour of skin. 

Hold my gaze

and you'll see even more to feel;

flickering specs of affirmation.

I see you.

See me.

Look for what you know

yet stay intimately curious

at all that unravels in

tender observation.

Hold space for me.

Let me react. 

Let me thrash with passion and 

cry with want--

softened by your patience

as I try to move from my mind to my heart

and trust that there is no rush

in loving you.

Hold back,

just for a moment.

Collect all that you touch

all that you see

and all that you can admit to want.

Sit with it.

Be provoked.

Be called to feel.

As I learn how to love you,

learn how to receive it.

Take in love not as you

know it to be,

but as it is for us.

And fearlessly hold more tightly

to it.




As published on Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/hold-me-poem/

My worth {poem}

To you I sway like sweet waves of honey,
and though the way my hips move to unheard music has you hypnotized,
there’s more to me than curves to trace with your hands.

My value isn’t in the skin underneath your fingertips as you reach out to touch what tempts you.

Lingering there will not collect my worth, and you cannot kiss me enough to make it known to me.

I do not find value in your arms,

comfort, yes,

arousal

yesss

oh yes

but my space in your bed is not my worth.

Nor is my space in your heart.

Love me.

Please do.

Love me for my body

and the way it fits in the grooves of yours and the way we glide together into each parcel of space.

Love me for the familiar scent of my

skin when you

close in on my neck.

Love me for the heart that

is pressed to yours

and the love you know it has for you—

not because I have told you

but from the undeniable richness of

our colliding energy,

the way your bones know the elixir

of their own marrow.

Love that it is safe here

in Us

and our unwavering honesty—

never has anything we cannot see

or touch

been so true.

Love me for the way I tease your mind

with my thoughts,

and how our dueling perspectives

amplify our senses.

But know that no amount of

attraction will detail my worth.

That while you place value on me,

and I on you

this love is not an exchange.

I do not give you my body,

touch my lips to yours,

feel my bones quake

because to be held by you

makes me worth something.

Your approval

is flattering and

your agreement

fiercely connecting

but I am not validated by it.

I am worth just as much with any of that as with nothing at all;

you see,

my value,

is in my Self

and the purity of my being alive at all—just as yours

should be to you.



As published by Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/01/my-value-is-not-in-my-body-poem/