Please don't make me love you

The night I tried to convince a stranger to swap shirts,

Saying his beard would look fly with my sequins

My heart took three steps backwards.

Your hands became rope that I tied myself up in

I never asked for this much

But I took it anyway-

I have a greedy heart.

It carries around dollars in four different currencies

No longer am I a fish holding silver between my teeth

These coins stick into my spine

And these problems tax more than I can afford to give.

I have forgotten how to be generous with my words

But when you asked me for a poem,

I peeled back the skin over my heart

Showed you the twenty-four bones of my rib cage

And the words strung between them.

Breathing in two silent halves of a pair-

You saw only the inconsistencies I carry within me.

This morning, I pulled down the bridge between them

With more hands than a street full of beggars

More fingernails to break off at the altar of

I don’t know what I believe anymore

(But I think it’s closer to heaven

Than anything I’ve ever seen before).

So please, don’t make me love you

Because these lungs hold too many contradictions

And my heart is as crooked as my fingers

It can’t hold onto anything

And I’ve broken too many bones

To be anything more than a five dollar bookshelf

Heart beating words so loudly

You can smell it from the street.