Love Me like a Mountain
I want to kiss a woman like a mountain, like a mountain.
My sign says ‘Must be this butch to ride’ and oh, she was.
I was moved like a mountain, I was
dragged willing with teeth to where I didn’t know I could feel that good.
I picked the burrs out of my socks for her,
soaked each callous in mango juice.
In this den, I learned to be soft.
After the weekend, we agree to stay in touch.
I run light fingers over a map, over Pittsburg.
I text her, “Would you like to talk on the phone sometime?”
The read receipt sits through the night. I didn't know I could still be this scared.
I remind myself “I have always been brave.”
I want to spin words like a child, just like a child. I
want to write a love poem no trauma in sight. I
refuse to say the words but it exists between these lines. “I
have always been brave,” is the motto it’s implied
in the absence in the always there is history of pain:
I have always been brave.
I had to be too brave.
Trauma’s patter feet across letters, behind kerning, around lean.
Running up and down the halls of my mind at night, intertwined with thoughts of her.
Her said like a new sunflower, like “make me cum” but murmured,
her said like hands gesturing on high like above your head like yes, we’re high.
Like something big something vast, tectonic plates moving, like coconut oil on warm skin.
Her said like “I think you deserve a love poem that's all about you and not how much I burn.”
But oh do I, burn.
The cherry blossoms are blooming outside Dominos.
I think of picking some for her and hanging them up to dry but I always forget my scissors.
I am scared the flowers will die in the next frost.
They have died, before.
I think I have to do it now if at all.
Cris Iacoponi is a Philadelphia-based queer poet. Her work focuses on aspects of Surviving: mental illness, trauma, capitalism, and loneliness. Add just a touch of sexy gossip and that's a wrap. She has been published in seven magazines including Rhythm & Bones Lit, the Awakenings Foundation, Crooked Arrow Press, and Claer. You can reach her at miacoponi@uarts.edu, or stay up to date with her work @crispoems.
