sjsprWriting

NOT MINE!

Five Reasons Not to Fall in Love With A Poet
- [d.a.s]

1. They will spend countless hours on the phone,

reciting things they wrote about you.

They will tell you “your eyes are an endless ocean

And your freckles are spattered constellations

I fell in love with you in Autumn

Because the leaves were the exact same shade as your hair.”

Don’t fall in love with poets because three hour long calls filled with lies waste money.

2. They treat “I love you”s like bandages and plaster,

They’ll pull it out as if it can fix broken bones and cure the flu.

But love is mostly just a word,

And while poets think words can heal you,

Most people have realized that words just hurt.

Don’t fall in love with poets because I love you doesn’t stop the bleeding when you cut yourself open.

3. They think there’s something sick inside us all,

So it doesn’t matter if you’re happy,

They’ll find a fissure and say

There. You’re broken. Let me fix you.

Don’t fall in love with poets because they’ll break you in order to try to fix themselves.

4. When you curl up in bed,

Your head resting gently on their chest,

You’ll find tears dripping from your curls and fingers on your cheek,

And they’ll ask you what happens if you die tomorrow?

Don’t fall in love with poets because they’re too busy with themselves to fuck you properly.

5. When you break up, you’ll become nothing more than three scribbled pages in their journal,

Living in sheets of paper and carbon-based ink

Instead of where you used to be, a body on their linen sheets,

As they wrote prose about the spaces in between your ribs.

Don’t fall in love with poets because they’ll write a poem about how much they miss you six months after they said It’s not you, it’s me, and they’ll cough it up on your doorstep, crumpled and torn, as if to say

There.