My love was like a lamp shade

I just want to talk about love tonight

what to do when it happens

how to act if it should come along

some will come bearing a disguise

and you’ll call it a lamp shade or a second dresser drawer

just another fixture of the house

an old frying pan

you will not recognize it is there

until you need to boil eggs or make a marinade and it is gone

other love will be the windows cracked

and glass shattered

and a mouse chewed his way through my kitchen table

it will be all those things and everyone will tell

you this is just a nightmare

it will be over soon

come back to the dinner table

so you will come back

still there might be one love that comes

with barely a whisper

a woman walks through

the door or a man and you lean in closer to see who it is

and they swallow you up whole

they pick apart your bones like children

making swords out of paper and pipe cleaners

they feed you bits of your own body back

when they leave

you tell no one they were there

this person who walked inside my skin

lives down the block and works at the jcpenny

doing the cash register of course

and I think about their hands

handling the money

holding the clothes

like the way they held me

it was just another job to do